Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Preface 1
Introduction 5
Conclusion 210
Chapter Notes 217
Bibliography 231
Index 257
v
When we discuss games, we are not discussing certain biologically inevitable
occurrences, though they may be ethologically probable. Rather, we are dis-
cussing multidimensional phenomena, varied in the cultural purpose to which
they are applied and inherently susceptible, for these varied reasons, to many
possible systems of conceptual analysis.—Sutton-Smith & Avedon, 1971a, p. 4
Preface
Although I didn’t know it at the time, the first table game I can remember
playing could loosely be considered German in origin. My grandmother, a
necessarily frugal woman, would collect the boxes from Lyon’s individual fruit
pies and carefully cut out the images on the front of the boxes. When my
sister and I would visit her, these were used as the cards in a makeshift version
of the matching game known in England as Concentration. Cleverly, my grand-
mother’s design allowed for two variants — one where one simply matched
identical pies, and another where the pies had to be matched with an image
of the appropriate fruit. Of course, folk versions of this game had been around
since at least the sixteenth century, but it was William Hurter’s implementa-
tion, Memory, that cemented Ravensburger as the premier manufacturer of
games at the 1959 Nuremberg toy fair. What I find so endearing is that my
grandmother took the time to create her own version for us.
Like many adult gamers, I have played games in one form or another
throughout my life. My father taught me to play chess at an early age — though
I am still only a passable player — and some of the fondest memories of my
childhood are of playing mainstream board games such as Totopoly (Palmer
& Lee, 1938), Bermuda Triangle (1976), and Buccaneer (Bull, 1938). Later
still, I vividly recall my father — who had an abiding interest in the Napoleonic
Era — bringing home a copy of Waddington’s Campaign (1971). The game was
far more complex than those I was used to, and, to be honest, I don’t know
if we ever played a full game. But I do remember very clearly the words
inscribed along the box-edge: “For adults and older children.” This, along
with the beautiful board, delicate pieces and luxurious rulebook, hinted at
gaming that wasn’t just for kids — board games, it seemed, were also something
that grown-ups played.
As a teenager in the late 1970s a friend introduced me to Dungeons and
Dragons.1 Although like many I was initially baffled by the idea of a game
with no board, it wasn’t long before I fell under the spell of the game. By this
time complexity had ceased to be an issue, and I derived boundless pleasure
1
2 PREFACE
from poring over the arcane charts and lists of magical items that made up
the first Dungeon Master’s Guide. I found a small group of school friends to
play with, and for three years I was a passionate devotee. Through one par-
ticularly bleak English winter we completed the entirety of what are now
known as the Queen of the Spiders modules.2 We might even have completed
the Tomb of Horrors successfully, but I doubt it. At the height of my enthu-
siasm, at an early UK convention I was even lucky enough to have the honor
of playing across a table from the late Gary Gygax. Gaming had become a
significant part of my life.
Like many gamers, however, the preoccupations of my later teenage years
forced games to take a back seat for a period of time. I abandoned role-playing
for the most part, but still continued to visit the Hammersmith Games Work-
shop, where I discovered hobbyist titles such as Talisman,3 Cosmic Encounter4
and many others that I foisted upon friends with varying degrees of success.
Although I didn’t attend university at that time, many of my friends did, and
late night games of Talisman (with every expansion, of course), fuelled by a
variety of intoxicants, were the stuff of legend. If you haven’t played for five
straight hours only to fall into the “horrible black void,” then you haven’t
really played Talisman!
In later life I moved around a little but still managed to find a way to fit
games into my life whenever possible. Shortly after moving to Australia I
started a small gaming group. Being a little short of money, our source of
games consisted of an old battered copy of Risk5 and whatever we could find
at local charity shops. One of the problems with acquiring games in this way
was the tendency to come home with boxes of components that had, at some
point, become separated from the actual rules to the game. It was while search-
ing for rules to one particular game that I found the website boardgamegeek,
and before long was exposed to the variety of modern titles that are collectively
known as eurogames. Like many others, I was immediately taken by the design
style and actively sought out more and more games to enjoy with the growing
number of players who now found their way to the group. Before long my
collection of games was growing exponentially, and I had helped to found the
West Australian Boardgaming Association, a not-for-profit organization that
aims to support gaming in the community and raise awareness of the benefits
of playing games. Thus, when the time came for me to decide on a research
topic for my doctorate, the direction was obvious. The result of that research
is the book you now hold in your hands.
There is a reason for this lengthy preamble. I would like to think that
this book is informed by every game I have ever played, from fruit pie Memory
at my grandmother’s table to the game of Dominion6 I enjoyed with my son
last night. To understand games one has to play them, and I have been lucky
Preface 3
The research and study of board games could be seen as a “dead science” for
many, especially now that a well-developed, digitally interactive media has
found “videogames” to be a very prolific market. There has not been extensive
research in the area of board games. Researchers have sporadically appeared
and disappeared, leaving a legacy that few have systematically followed.—
Ortega-Grimaldo, 2008, p. 34
For many people, board games are an anachronism. The idea of gathering
around a table to move pieces on a board conjures up visions of a bygone era,
one in which a sense of community flourished, families played together and
porch doors were always open. Although these same people will occasionally
play board games, typically with their children or at family gatherings, for
the most part these games are consigned to the same closet as typewriters and
rotary dial telephones, all victims of the inevitable redundancy that accom-
panies technological progress. For some people, however, board games are far
from being redundant. To them they are a hobby, a passion, even an obsession.
It is these people, the games they play, and their experience of that play that
is the subject of this book. Specifically, this book is a study of hobbyist gamers
who play a form of board game commonly referred to as eurogames.
For the purposes of this book I use the term board game to refer to any
game that requires a tabletop for play. However, many of the games described
herein are not played on a board as such. In fact, a significant number are
card games. Nevertheless, I have used the term board games to avoid the
clumsiness of repeated reference to “board and table games.” Where not indi-
cated in the text, the specific form of a game is noted in the reference list that
is found at the end of the book. The term “hobby games” is explained in
detail in the second chapter of this book. Briefly, it refers to a number of
specific game forms that have emerged over the last forty years and which
appeal to a particular audience. Examples are wargames, role-playing games,
collectible card games and the topic of this book — eurogames.
5
6 INTRODUCTION
This book examines the form of eurogames, the hobbyist culture that
surrounds them, and the way that hobbyists experience the play of such games.
Aside from the personal involvement I have already described, my interest in
this particular genre stems from two related observations. Firstly, eurogames
are the most recent form of game to be taken up en masse by gaming hobbyists.
Secondly, and this is perhaps the more interesting observation, eurogames
have emerged and grown in popularity almost concurrently with the rise of
digital games. While I am not suggesting that there is any causal relationship
between the rise of these two forms, I cannot help but wonder what it is about
eurogames that holds player interest at a time when the rich worlds of digital
play have become the dominant form of gaming in the (developed) world.
This is the first question that is central to this book — why do hobbyists play
eurogames?
The second question that informs this book stems from my own play of
games generally. As I approached this research, I found myself increasingly
fascinated by an apparent contradiction in the play of social games. Ostensibly,
a defining element of competitive play is the valorization of winning. Con-
sequently, players play to win. Yet my experience of playing in a variety of
contexts suggested to me that players were far more concerned with the social
outcome of the game than with any status that could be gained by winning.
Clearly then, there are two forces at work here — the desire to win and the
desire to have fun with other people. The question that arises from this obser-
vation is this: How do players balance the structure of competitive play with
the demands of an intimate social gathering?
The observation that eurogames are, by definition, a social experience
leads to my final research question. In 1938 Johan Huizinga famously described
play as “an act apart” (1950, p. 10), delimited by a “magic circle” that separates
the activity from “ordinary life” (p. 13). Roger Caillois too describes games
as “separate” (1958, p. 10), as does Chris Crawford when he proposes that games
are a “closed formal system” (1982, p. 7). As Juul notes, however, the bound-
aries between the game world and the real are not perfect but rather are “fuzzy
areas under constant negotiation” (2005, p. 36). My experience of game play
has suggested to me that a particular game can offer a vastly different expe-
rience depending upon the context in which it is played. Players — and the
interaction between them — can have a significant impact on the experience
of social play in a way that suggests to me that board game systems are any-
thing but closed. Thus, the final question I seek to answer in this book is this:
To what extent does the social context of the game encounter shape the expe-
rience of game play?
Given the questions I have identified here, I hope it is apparent why the
scope of this book is at once broad and highly specific. It is specific as it
Introduction 7
has described a “classic game model” that seeks to encompass “at least a 5,000
year history of games” (2005, p. 23). Aki Järvinen, in his book Games Without
Frontiers, adopts a wide-ranging approach to the analysis of games that allows
for all forms of games, digital or otherwise (2009). Salen and Zimmerman’s
textbook, Rules of Play, is similarly inclusive of all game types (2004). These
are a few examples of writers and scholars whose analysis of games has
embraced the entirety of the form.
Unfortunately, despite these proclamations of inclusiveness, board games
appear to occupy the same position in the new ludology as they do in the
broader culture — small primitive ancestors of an evolved form. It is true that
a number of writers who acknowledge the commonality of game forms have
argued for the value of examining non-digital games, most notably Eskelinen
(2005, p. 10), designer Greg Costikyan (1998; 2011) and scholar Janet Murray
(2003). However, while a few researchers have gone on to offer such analysis,
they have typically discussed board games with a view to establishing con-
nections and/or design features that relate to video games.2 Thus, while the
study of games has accelerated in recent years, academic attention to the
specific area of board games remains relatively sparse.
The first serious research into sedentary games is that of ethnologist
Stewart Culin, who embarked on a number of research projects that sought
to collect and compare the wide variety of games that were found in disparate
cultures (1891; 1894; 1899; 1900; 1907). In terms of tabletop games specifically,
the first book that deals with a variety of examples is H. J. R. Murray’s A His-
tory of Board-Games Other Than Chess (1952). Murray analyzed a number of
abstract positional games, describing a schema by which they could be cate-
gorized. R. C. Bell adopted a similar approach, again limited to positional
games, in his Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations (1979). David
Parlett’s Oxford History of Board Games (1999) adapts both Murray and Bell’s
taxonomies, again with a strong focus on abstract positional games. Gobet,
de Voogt and Retschitzki’s Moves in Mind: The Psycholog y of Board Games
(2004) is another more recent addition to the literature, although its focus is
the cognitive and psychological aspects in the play of traditional abstract
games. This emphasis on traditional examples is also reflected in the work of
the International Society for Board Game Studies. Established in the early
1990s, the society holds a yearly colloquium that has occasionally included
papers on contemporary commercial games but is limited mostly to traditional
examples.
In terms of mass-market board games, Bruce Whitehill has done much
to document the evolution of games in the U.S. (1992; 2004). Most other
writers have been content to focus on specific proprietary games and/or man-
ufacturers, in many cases with a somewhat nostalgic tone.3 David Pritchard’s
Introduction 9
edited collection The Games and Puzzles Book of Modern Board Games (1975)
is a notable exception, focusing as it does on a number of then-contemporary
proprietary games, including mainstream titles such as Monopoly (Darrow and
Magie, 1935) and Cluedo (Pratt, 1948), along with lesser known examples
such as Diplomacy (Calhamer, 1959) and Confrontation (1974).
Hobby games have been of only sporadic interest to games scholars, with
publications often arising from within the hobby rather than the academy.
Wargames are a good example of this, with a number of titles devoted to dis-
cussing the form from the perspective of enthusiasts.4 The more noteworthy
of these include Nicholas Palmer’s early Comprehensive Guide to Board
Wargaming (1977) and Best of Board Wargaming (1980), Jon Freeman’s Com-
plete Book of Wargames (1980), and Jim Dunnigan’s Complete Wargames Hand-
book (1980a). More recent critical analysis is found in the work of Matthew
Kirshenbaum (2009) and Patrick Crogan (2003).
In contrast, role-playing games have been a site of interest for scholars
since their inception. Undoubtedly the most well known work on the topic
is Gary Fine’s subcultural analysis of the early hobby, Shared Fantasy: Role
Playing Games as Social Worlds (1983). Daniel Mackay’s The Fantasy Role Play-
ing Game: A New Performance Art (2001) provides a more up-to-date per-
spective on the performative aspects of the genre; while recent works by
Jennifer Cover (2010) and Sarah Bowman (2010) address a variety of topics,
including the creation of narrative and the construction of identity, respec-
tively. The narrative aspects of role-playing games are also explored in a num-
ber of articles in Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrup-Fruin’s series of collections
(2004; 2007; 2009).5 A particularly strong scholarly community has developed
around role-playing games in Scandinavia where the largest role-playing con-
vention moves between four countries, producing a book on the topic each
year.6 Overall, the study of role-playing games has remained particularly active
compared with other forms of hobby game.
One notable publication that manages to bridge the gap between video
games and hobby games is the collection Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality,
Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games (Williams et al., 2006). Taking as
its theme fantasy games generally, the book contains a number of illuminating
articles on the play and culture of collectible card games.7 Other studies of
collectible card games include Mark Bordenet’s masters thesis on the identity
of gamers (2000), and Lenarcic and Mackay-Scollay’s (2005) discussion of
the positive social impact of playing Magic: The Gathering (Garfield, 1993).
On the topic of eurogames specifically, critical writings are few and far
between. Costikyan and Davidson et al.’s collection, Tabletop: Analogue Game
Design (2011), includes an eclectic mix of essays, some of which address exam-
ples from within the genre.8 Sybille Aminzadah examines the reasons for the
10 INTRODUCTION
popular success of Die Siedler von Catan (Teuber, 1995) through interviews
with German players (2004); while Stöckmann and Jahnke have written on
the general culture of gaming in Germany, as well as discussing the intersec-
tions between literature and German board games (2008a; 2008b).9 Finally,
Yehuda Berlinger’s presentation at the 2009 Board Game Colloquium
expressly addresses some of the identifying characteristics of the eurogame
genre (2009b).
As is apparent from this brief review, to date there are no substantial critical
works that address the topic of modern board games, much less eurogames. In
the words of Francisco Ortega-Grimaldo, the study of board games has remained
“a dead science” (2008, p. 34). Despite the resurgence of interest in games in
general, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to board games and the
play experiences they foster. This book aims in part to fill this gap, as well as
to contribute to broader understandings of the adult play of games.
rience of playing these games, together with the examination of the influences
upon their design and a historical review of the tabletop game as a cultural
activity, contribute to a situated understanding of the nature of eurogames.
of play, with particular emphasis upon the issues outlined above. These survey
responses are denoted in this book by the prefix R, followed by a number
(e.g., R567). The format of the survey provided results that could not have
been gathered through observation.10 As a part of the overall enquiry, these
responses informed the generation of a number of conclusions that were sup-
ported through informal participant observation.
A Brief Introduction
to Hobby Games
We might think of games as charming historical artifacts, but they are also
telling reflections of social values and mores.— Brown, 2004
Eurogames are the most recent variety of what have come to be termed
“hobby games.” While this term might seem to be self-explanatory, it has
come to denote a variety of games that are differentiated from other forms by
their appeal to a particular segment of the population over the last half-cen-
tury. Leisure theorist Richard Stebbins describes the play of competitive games
generally as one of four forms of “serious leisure,” including in his description
many sports, along with sedentary games such as Bridge, Shuffleboard and
computer games (1992, pp. 13–14). Yet, while we might describe the active
engagement with such pastimes as constituting a hobby, they are rarely, if
ever, described as hobby games. Since the focus of this book is a particular
form of hobby board game, a clear explanation of the games under discussion
is necessary. Moreover, since the term hobby board game has emerged from
within the hobby itself, the most effective way to clarify its meaning is to
describe the various forms of hobby games that have appeared over the last
fifty years.
To this end I begin here by discussing the principal ways in which tra-
ditional board games have been categorized in the past, identifying the lim-
itations of these schemata in the context of contemporary board game designs.
As an alternative, I propose that the contemporary board game market can
be divided into three categories: traditional games, mass-market games and
hobby games. Hobby games can be further delineated into four principal gen-
res, those being wargames, role-playing games, collectible card games and
eurogames. In discussing the first three of these genres in this chapter, I not
only wish to document the nature and variety of hobby games that have
emerged over the last fifty years, but also to provide a clearer idea of why it
15
16 EUROGAMES
is that the term hobby games has been applied to these forms, and indeed
why they are generally grouped together by members of the community and
industry.
for a particular market and for essentially commercial reasons. The nature of
such games is that they are played by particular groups of people and thus
lend themselves to the development of cultural formations which reflect both
the moment in which they are produced and the identity and recreational
choices of the players. This historical, cultural and economic context cannot
be ignored in considering any categorization. With this in mind, a more useful
approach is a simple schema that distinguishes between three principal types
of board game: the classical game, the mass-market game and the hobby
game.
Broadly speaking, classical games refers to those non-proprietary games
that have been passed down from antiquity and whose authorship is presumed
to emerge from multiple iterative changes over time. Mass-market games refers
to those commercial titles that are produced and sold in large numbers year
after year, and which constitute the common perception of commercial board
games. Finally, hobby games are those games that are not targeted towards the
general mass market but to a specific group who can be termed hobby gamers.
As I note above, many players of classic games, such as Chess, or proprietary
mass market games, such as Scrabble (Butts, 1948), might describe themselves
as participating in a hobby. However, in the sense that I use the term here,
hobby games constitute a subsection of the broader market that tends to
attract those with a specific interest in a particular form of commercial game.
A brief discussion of each of these forms will serve to clarify these distinc-
tions.
Classical Games
Classical games are readily identifiable as those games to which no author
is attributed and of which no company or organization claims ownership.
Although some classical games have identifiable themes, they are most com-
monly abstract. In categorizing these public domain or “folk” games, Parlett
(1999) draws on the work of H. J. R. Murray (1952) and R. C. Bell (1979) in
describing four types of game, as identified by the game goals: race games, in
which players traverse a track in an attempt to be first to finish (e.g., Nyout,
Pachisi); space games, in which players manipulate the position of pieces to
achieve prescribed alignments, make connections, or traverse the board (e.g.,
Noughts and Crosses, Twixt1 and Halma, respectively); chase games, in which
asymmetrical starting positions and goals cast players in the role of pursuer
and pursued (e.g., Hnefatafl, Fox & Geese); and games of displacement, where
symmetrically equipped players attempt to capture and eliminate each other’s
pieces (e.g., Chess, Draughts). While these games are not the focus of this
18 EUROGAMES
book, it is worth noting that they are perhaps the closest relatives of the mod-
ern eurogames discussed here, in that it is the game system that holds the
attention of the game player rather than the thematic elements that are so
central to both mass-market games and many hobby game forms.
Mass-Market Games
Mass-market games are those proprietary games that have come to dom-
inate the shelves of large toy retailers and with which the activity of board gam-
ing is commonly associated by the general public. Mass-market games tend to
be one of three types. The first of these are the more successful of the numerous
family games that were produced during the 19th and 20th century.2 Examples
such as Scrabble, Monopoly (Darrow and Magie, 1935), The Game of Life
(Klamer, 1960), Clue (Pratt, 1948) and Candyland (Abbott, 1949) have continued
to sell well long after their initial publication. Over time the rules to these games
have become a part of the Western cultural lexicon and are easily transferred
from one generation to the next. A result of this is that the shelves of large retail
outlets are typically dominated by games that were, in many cases, designed
more than half a century ago. While these games might be termed “classic” in
the sense that they occupy a central position in cultural understandings of board
and table games, they have, arguably, acquired this status largely through a
combination of manufactured nostalgia and effective marketing.
The second form of mass-market board game is that of the “party game”
whose popularity exploded following the success of Trivial Pursuit in the early
1980s (Haney and Abbot, 1981). Typically, such games are akin to Victorian-
era parlor games in that they tend to focus on performance and social inter-
action as a primary goal in play. Thus they generally have simple rules and
accommodate large groups of players. Examples of successful titles include
Pictionary (Angel, 1985), Outburst! (Hersch, 1986), Cranium (Alexander and
Tait, 1998) and Taboo (Hersch, 1989).
The final type of game that has become ubiquitous in the mass-market
is the licensed game, whose origins can largely be traced to the emergence of
television in the 1950s. The arrival of television had a significant impact on
the way leisure time was spent in the average home. Games manufacturers
were swift to embrace this new medium as a source of inspiration for a swathe
of titles which Parlett terms “pulp games” (1999, p. 347). Although games
manufacturers had often looked to current trends and fads for inspiration,
the arrival of television had a far more dramatic impact on the games business
than did earlier cultural trends, since each new television show brought with
it another opportunity to repackage familiar mechanics with a new theme:
1. A Brief Introduction to Hobby Games 19
During the ’50s, many game companies ... began to acquire more and more
licenses to television shows. Businesses that once hoped to sell a game that
would be a staple in the line for decades were now making products that
would be obsolete as soon as the program on which they were based was no
longer on the air. More attention was given to the name and character on the
box than to the product inside [Whitehill, 1997].
Generally, these titles are of such socio-cultural specificity that they are usually
forgotten as quickly as the shows, and later movies, which inspire them. Exam-
ples of these at the time of writing are Dexter: The Board Game (2010), Glee
Board Game (2010), Gossip Girl Never Have I Ever Game (2009) and Dancing
with the Stars Board Game (2008). The mechanics of these types of games are
typically derivative and uninspired, prompting Parlett to evaluate them as
“essentially trivial, ephemeral, mind-numbing, and ultimately [of a] soul
destroying degree of worthlessness” (1999, p. 7).
A common and notable hybrid of these three forms stems from the growth
in licensing and crossover branding. Where previously the larger game manu-
facturers might have commissioned new, if unoriginal, designs to accompany
ephemeral trends, there is a tendency now to merely weave them together with
existing game licenses. A quick survey of toy giant Hasbro’s range of board games
in 2010 reveals Monopoly—Spiderman 3 Edition (2007), Monopoly—SpongeBob
Squarepants Edition (2005), Monopoly—Transformers Collector’s Edition (2007),
The Game of Life—Pirates of the Caribbean (2004), The Game of Life—Simpson’s
Edition (2004), Candyland—Winnie the Pooh Edition (2008) and Candyland—
Dora the Explorer Edition (2005). In most cases the resulting hybrid retains all
the same mechanical elements as the original game, the branding merely appear-
ing as window-dressing in order to attract the targeted market.
The contemporary mass-market games industry is essentially built upon
the repackaging of 20th century proprietary games, party games, and a few
original titles that appear yearly to satisfy fans of particular media licenses.
As designer and publisher Mike Petty notes, the larger game companies such
as Hasbro and Mattel now have little motivation to explore the potential of
new game styles (2006) and are reluctant to even consider game submissions
from outside of a small pool of developers (Verbeten, 2007, p. 31). As industry
commentator and designer Greg Costikyan eloquently affirms, “Hasbro is fat
and happy and basically doesn’t give a fuck about innovation” (1998).3
Hobby Games
Where the rise of television was to prove a challenge for larger toy man-
ufacturers that eventually resulted in a dearth of novel game play ideas, the
20 EUROGAMES
hobby gaming industry and the culture surrounding it emerged and flourished
in the latter half of the 20th century. Indeed, contrary to the impression that
might be gathered from the shelves of large retailers, game design has expe-
rienced significant advances over the last five decades. Entirely new genres of
game have emerged and evolved outside of the mass-market, so much so that
the landscape of contemporary board and table games is radically different
than it was in the 1950s when the larger companies seemingly decided that
there were enough good games to satisfy the average consumer indefinitely.
In the final chapter of The Oxford History of Board Games Parlett briefly
discusses contemporary commercial games, and in doing so, expands his tax-
onomy to describe the genre of “specialist games”:
These may be characterized as games of skill and strategy appealing to players
broadly describable as adult, serious, educated, intelligent. Many of these
share the associated features of classic games, from which category they are
only excluded by their appeal to a specialist section of the market [1999, p.
347].
Parlett is referring here to a subsection of gaming enthusiasts that emerged in
the latter half of the 20th century and whose interests lay largely outside of
both classical abstract games and those that dominate the mass-market. The
forms of games these enthusiasts play are more commonly referred to as hobby
games.
Wargaming
Wargaming, the earliest form of hobby gaming to emerge, has its origins
in early simulation games employed by the military.8 Evolving through the
early 20th century largely through miniature-based games,9 the hobby was
experiencing a resurgence of interest in the 1950s when American Charles S.
Roberts designed the first modern board wargame, Tactics (1954).10 In 1958,
after selling the initial 2000 copies, and with growing interest in the game,
Roberts founded Avalon Hill, a company that went on to develop most of the
dominant principles of pre-electronic wargaming in a successful series of
games depicting specific conflicts.11
The success of Avalon Hill, and the enthusiastic response to the conflict
simulations the company was producing, prompted other designers to follow
its example. Along with Avalon Hill, companies such as Simulation Publica-
tions Incorporated (SPI), Game Designer’s Workshop (GDW) and Simula-
tions Design Corporation (SDC) ushered in “the golden age of wargaming”
in the 1970s (Dunnigan, 2000). Of these companies, SPI was by far the most
significant, producing the magazine Strateg y & Tactics, a publication that set
the benchmark for community contribution and feedback.12 A typical board
wargame of this period used a hexagonal grid representing a variety of terrain
features, units represented by cardboard tokens printed with the abilities of
each, and sophisticated probability-based tables for determining the outcomes
of encounters based upon a combination of statistical data and designer’s intu-
ition. In contrast with mass-market games, the designer’s name would often
appear on the packaging; indeed, the term “game designer” was first coined
by Redmond Simonsen at SPI (Costikyan, 2006).
At the same time as Roberts had been working on his fledgling designs,
Alan Calhamer, a Harvard student of European history, was devising and refin-
ing a game based upon diplomatic machinations in Europe during the lead-
up to the First World War. The game, Diplomacy (1959), was entirely different
to Roberts’ strategic simulations, relying on the interpersonal negotiating skills
of multiple players in the resolution of relatively simplistic board-based conflict
mechanics. Following unsuccessful approaches to major game companies, Cal-
hamer initially produced a run of 500 copies of the game in 1959, and it has
been in print near-continuously since then (Sharpe, 1978). Although not,
strictly speaking, a wargame, Diplomacy has become a hobby unto itself, with
postal play and later play-by-email proving particularly successful.
1. A Brief Introduction to Hobby Games 23
Squad Leader— the largest selling wargame to date (image by Wesley Williams,
courtesy Multiman Publishing).
Although the conflict simulation branch of the hobby is still active today,
wargaming has not again achieved the popularity of the 1960s and 1970s.
While miniature gaming retains its attraction for younger hobbyists, princi-
pally through the efforts of Games Workshop and their Warhammer line of
fantasy and science fiction games, the larger hobby has experienced a significant
decline from its heyday.
As Dunnigan explains, wargame designers typically attempt to simulate
specific moments in history, using detailed information to revisit pivotal
conflicts. Although many forms of game are simulative to some degree,
wargames took this to an extreme, utilizing complex rulesets and laboriously
researched combat resolution tables (CRTs) to approximate the possible out-
comes of any given event with a combination of dice and their associated
probabilities. This element, which gamers refer to as “chrome.” tends to result
in extremely long and detailed rulesets. Indeed, the term “Avalon-ese” has
become a way of describing rulesets that feature large numbers of exceptions
in order to allow for every special circumstance that might arise during the
game. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the wargame model expanded to encom-
pass alternative futures, science fiction and fantasy, the notion that such games
were simulations persisted, as did the attendant complexity. A consequence
of this was that the play of such games was restricted to those who had both
the patience and disposition to wade through lengthy rulebooks. The com-
plexity of these systems meant that these were not games for the average per-
son — these were “gamers’ games.” Players were not, generally speaking, casual
participants but rather enthusiastic members of a growing hobby gaming cul-
ture.
attempt to infiltrate an enemy castle in what he has since described as the first
fantasy role-playing game (Fine, 1983, p. 13). Before long, Gygax was exposed
to Arneson’s idea of one-player-per-character, and the pair spent the early
1970s working on a ruleset that would become Dungeons and Dragons (1974a),
the first commercially produced role-playing game (RPG). Despite Gygax’s
feelings that the game would only appeal to a limited number of hobbyists,20
the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons grew at an impressive rate, and the
name of the game would become synonymous with the role-playing hobby.
Generally speaking, in role-playing games players take on the role of
individual characters whose defining traits and abilities are specified by the
ruleset, but whose goals and motivations are changeable and dependent upon
the narrative of the game. A game master relates the unfolding events as they
happen to players, describing the game world and conveying to the players
the consequences of their actions. Typical of the game structure is the accu-
mulation of experience in varying forms that affects the player character’s sta-
tistics and therefore their relationship with the world as defined by the ruleset.
Generally, early role-playing games were played in a series of ongoing ses-
sions — a campaign — with individual play sessions forming a small part of a
larger adventure.
During the late 1970s, the success of Dungeons and Dragons resulted in
a flood of role-playing games that sought to emulate the success of the orig-
inal.21 Few literary or cinematic settings were not subject to the role-playing
treatment.22 Furthermore, as role-playing evolved, the early emphasis on com-
bat inherited from the hobby’s wargaming roots gave way to more imaginative
and theatrical approaches.23 Where previously game referees were content to
build large, self-contained environments for players to explore and subjugate,
emphasizing the combative elements of the game, the move away from this
approach resulted in a focus on narrative as the principal player motivator
(Mason, 2004, p. 6). Consequently, many games abandoned the dense rulesets
that had characterized early games in favor of a more free-form approach.
By the mid–1980s it seemed that there were few fictional realms left
untouched by role-playing. Steve Jackson’s Generic Universal Role Playing Sys-
tem (GURPS) (1986) attempted to simplify the needs of players who wished
to explore different environments by presenting a unified system that could
theoretically be applied to any fictional setting. The approach was successful,
spawning countless source books that covered a large variety of both generic
and licensed properties.
Throughout the 1990s the implementation of role-playing games on the
personal computer had a significant impact on the tabletop role-playing indus-
try. Although arguably requiring little (if any) in the way of actual role-playing,
the basic systems of character advancement and probability-based event out-
1. A Brief Introduction to Hobby Games 27
comes proved ideal for the medium. Significantly, however, the solitary play
also dispensed with the social element that was so integral to tabletop games:
Paper RPGs, unlike electronic ones, are social affairs; players get together peri-
odically to play, and spend at least as much time roleplaying for their friends
as they do trying to maximize their character’s effectiveness in a purely struc-
tural context. It’s common for a group of friends to get together for years,
playing the same characters in the game gameworld with the same gamemas-
ter. In the process, they establish long character histories, flesh out the world
background, and so on. For long term players, the stories they create can be as
emotionally powerful and personally meaningful as anything you find in a
novel or a movie — perhaps more so because the players are personally
involved in their creation [Costikyan, 2007, p. 9].
(2001) and Daniel Mackay (2001), along with a particularly vibrant Scandi-
navian community dedicated to the study of LARPs and role-playing games
generally, have contributed to a deeper understanding of the nature of role-
playing as both a game and a performative art.28
Richard Garfield’s Magic: The Gathering spawned an entire genre of games (image
by Simon Holding. © Wizards of the Coast LLC. Image used with permission).
30 EUROGAMES
they portrayed.33 By the late 1990s the market was beginning to cool, with
most attractive licenses having been subjected to the CCG treatment at some
stage. The year 1999 brought the North American release of the first serious
competitor to Magic in the unlikely form of a trading card game based upon
a Japanese children’s media franchise, Pokémon (1999). Although still a fully-
fledged CCG, Pokémon was squarely aimed at a younger demographic, and
its popularity was soon emulated by another Japanese entry to the market,
Yu-Gi-Oh! (Takahashi, 2002).
New CCGs continue to be released, and although the market is certainly
not as active as in the mid–1990s, notable and innovative titles do occasionally
appear. More recently, collectible card games have made the leap into the vir-
tual with the implementation of online versions. The first entirely online CCG
was Chron X (Moromisato et al., 1997), developed by Darkened Studios and
released in 1997. Subsequently, many successful CCGs have been re-imple-
mented in online versions, including Magic and out-of-print games such as
Decipher’s Star Wars (Darcy et al., 1995). Another offshoot of collectible card
games has been collectible miniatures. Blending the marketing model of CCGs
with the physicality of miniature wargaming, the first to be released was Mage
Knight (Weisman and Barrett, 2000). Subsequent successful releases include
Heroclix (Weisman et al., 2002), Axis and Allies Miniatures (Tweet et al.,
2005), Heroscape (Van Ness et al., 2004) and Star Wars Miniatures (Grubb et
al., 2004). Perhaps the most inclusive of all these games is the Dungeons and
Dragons Miniatures game (Elias et al., 2003), which simultaneously aims to
appeal to players of wargames, role-playing and collectible games.
Communities of Play
James Lowder, editor of the essay collection Hobby Games: The 100 Best
(2007a), describes a hobby game as one “that is designed in such a way that
players can devote a lot of time to its strategy or the community surrounding
it” (2007b). While many adults regularly play classical games, or occasionally
mass-market games within a family environment, hobby games form a par-
ticular focus for a specific group, where discussion of the game form and par-
ticipation in the community are often as important in a player’s life as the
play of the games themselves.
Whereas it has been suggested that adult play tends towards the norma-
tive in terms of its fixed rules (Paglieri, 2005), gaming hobbyists from the
outset displayed a clear tendency to experiment with rulesets, expecting input
into the kinds of games they wanted to play and experimenting with the form
as a part of their involvement (Costikyan, 1996). Thus, as early wargaming
1. A Brief Introduction to Hobby Games 31
created possibilities for adult recreational gaming, it also led to the formation
of the first communities of hobby gamers (Dunnigan, 1997). Typically edu-
cated western males, those who were involved in the industry were enthusiastic
participants in the hobby themselves, a characteristic reflected in the general
culture of the community today, where the line between consumer and pro-
ducer is blurred by the ongoing communication between the two groups and
the proliferation of amateur content (Winkler, 2006, p. 14).
Situating the player as a character in an imagined environment with
emergent, flexible goals, role-playing redefined understandings of games and
their potential as a creative and expressive art. Role-playing brought large
numbers of new participants into the gaming hobby, many of whom would
go on to actively contribute to the evolution of the genre. In contrast to role-
playing, collectible card games offered well-defined win and loss conditions,
achieved through careful resource management and strategic play. At the same
time, these games encouraged the formation of community through the
metagames of deck-building and tournaments. Indeed, collectible card games
that were discontinued by their original publishers remain the focus of active
player communities (Bisz, 2009). Each of these genres has contributed to the
shape of contemporary hobby gaming, influencing the growth of the cul-
ture — and the industry that supports it — prior to the emergence of eurogames.
2
Anglo–American Hobby
Board Games 1960 –1995
The games that defined hobby gaming through the latter half of the 20th
century typically focused on direct conflict as the key source of interaction
within play. While wargames were explicitly modeled after historical or imag-
ined armed conflicts, role-playing introduced the notion of the player versus
an environment. Although later manifestations of role-playing shifted away
from this adversarial relationship between the player and the game world, for
a considerable period this model was the dominant form within the genre.
Collectible card games, although largely abandoning the emphasis on
verisimilitude that characterized wargames and early role-playing, typically
pitted one player against another in a similar model of direct conflict. While
these three genres were critical in establishing and nurturing a market for
adult games, and, more significantly, an active community of gamers, in terms
of design none can be considered a direct predecessor to modern eurogames.
Concurrent with the growth of these particular game forms, the broader
field of board game design continued to evolve in ways that would later be
reflected in the form of eurogames. Between 1960 and 1995 a wide variety of
strategy board games aimed at the adult hobbyist market were published in
the USA and Great Britain. Although none of these games fit comfortably into
any of the hobby gaming genres described in the previous chapter, they were
typically distributed through the same retail channels and played by a similar
audience. As designers developed games outside the confines of the mass-market,
innovative titles increasingly pushed the boundaries of board game design, and
in doing so, laid some of the groundwork for the European-style designs that
were to follow. In some cases the influence of these games on the eurogame
genre is quite apparent, while in others it is perhaps only tenuous. Overall a
significant number of the games published during this period display a ten-
dency to de-emphasize positional mechanics in favor of play that draws on
interpersonal skills and reasoning. More importantly, the titles discussed in this
32
2. Anglo-American Hobby Board Games 1960 –1995 33
chapter are indicative of a gradual shift away from direct conflict in both
mechanic and theme, a characteristic that would later serve to define modern
eurogames.
An early Schmidt Spiele edition of Sid Sackson’s Acquire (image by Simon Hold-
ing, courtesy Amigo Spiele).
2. Anglo-American Hobby Board Games 1960 –1995 35
In essence, Acquire had most of the hallmarks that would later come to typify
the eurogame: an emphasis on abstracted system over theme, a relatively short
and clear ruleset, manageable playing time, and a lack of player elimination.
The possible reasons for the strong influence of Sackson and Randolph’s work
will be discussed a little later. For the moment it is sufficient to acknowledge
that at a point in the early 1970s designers in Germany began taking cues
from their work that would eventually result in an identifiable game design
style.
perennial best-sellers —Monopoly, Cluedo and Scrabble. There were new, not
particularly inspired, games for the under 10s, but hardly anything of sub-
stance for an older market [Dagger, 2008].
The void left as the established companies neglected the adult market
was soon filled by a number of smaller businesses offering strategy titles with-
out the emphasis on conflict simulation that drove the American hobby.
Among the first of these companies was Intellect Games whose early titles
included the British political game Election (1972), the first edition of David
Parlett’s race game Hare and Tortoise (1973), and the two-player tile-placement
abstract Thoughtwave (1974), designed by Eric Solomon.6 Another Solomon
design of the period, the innovative Sigma File (1973),7 featured pieces rep-
resenting spies that could be moved by any player but whose allegiance was
secretly determined.
The U.K. games company Ariel published a number of successful games
during the 1970s, of which the most significant was the War of the Roses sim-
ulation by Andrew McNeil, Kingmaker (1974).8 Although ostensibly a game
of military conflict, Kingmaker involved political machinations, a simulated
parliament and random events that dramatically affected the course of play.
The rights to the game were quickly acquired by Avalon Hill in the USA,
where it was significantly revised by designers Don Greenwood and Mick Uhl
in correspondence with McNeil (McNeil, 1979). In terms of wargaming, King-
maker was “the first imported game to take the American hobby by storm”
(“Avalon Hill General Index,” 1980). Other notable games from Ariel included
the Robert Abbott two-player abstract Epaminondas (1975), the nuclear war
simulation Confrontation (1974), and the roll-and-move business game Fortune
(Fenwick, 1979).
Perhaps the biggest influence on German board game design from the
U.K. came from the games of Francis Tresham. Tresham’s first game, 1829
(1974), offered players a simulation of railway expansion in southern England
that simultaneously incorporated development and stock holding. A watershed
in board game design, 1829 spawned an entire sub-genre of games known as
the 18XX series, within which numerous designers have developed scores of
scenarios and rulesets (often self-published) which see the development of
railways in locations as diverse as Trinidad ( Jacobi, 1996), Malaysia (Lau,
2006) and Namibia (Ohley and Romoth, 2004). The most successful itera-
tions, however, have generally been produced by established companies and
include the Avalon Hill–commissioned 1830 (Tresham, 1986) and Mayfair
Games’ 1870 (Dixon, 1994).
While signs of innovation were apparent in a number of U.K. games,
developments in the USA also prefigured some of the features that would later
appear in eurogames. In terms of American games of this period, one stands
2. Anglo-American Hobby Board Games 1960 –1995 37
Rings,12 and later with titles such as Swords and Sorcery (Costikyan, 1978) and
Dragonslayer (Simonsen and Hessel, 1981).
A similar shift at Avalon Hill also resulted in a number of notable games.
The two most enduring titles of the period are the fantasy games Titan (McAl-
lister and Trampier, 1980) and Magic Realm (Hamblen, 1978). Titan, essen-
tially a multiplayer tactical wargame, deals with the mustering of an army of
mythological creatures and their subsequent engagement in combat across
varying terrains. Interestingly, the mustering of forces occurs on one shared
master board, while combat takes place on a number of “battleland” boards.
Titan remains popular and was reprinted by Valley Games in late 2008. Magic
Realm was Avalon Hill’s first foray into role-playing, albeit in a somewhat
complex board game format. The game uses a modular hex board in the cre-
ation of a variable landscape, and, although initially hampered by poorly pre-
sented rules, it retains a small cult following.
Metagaming Concepts, another significant force in the gaming hobby
during the late 1970s and early 1980s were most notable for the creation and
popularization of microgames — small cheap games packaged in plastic bags
(and, later, small boxes).13 Of the many games released in this format, none
was as successful as Ogre ( Jackson, 1977b). An asymmetric simulation broadly
reminiscent of the Hnefatafl family of abstract games, Ogre pitches an enor-
mous armored vehicle against a small force of ground troops. Ogre was later
reprinted by designer Steve Jackson’s eponymous company and still garners
respect among hobby gamers.14 The concept of the microgame was later appro-
priated by a number of companies, including SPI, TSR and Task Force Games.
Although many of the titles of this era draw largely on the tropes of
wargaming in their mechanics, a notable distinction in terms of gameplay
was the increasing number of games that allowed more than two players, a
trait that tends to lead to the presence of diplomatic negotiation within the
game:
These [multi-player games] seem to have a definite popularity edge in the SF
contest, perhaps because the “fun” side of wargaming is dominant in both SF
simulation and political skullduggery [Palmer, 1980, p. 18].
Exemplary of this development, and by far the most significant game of this
period, is Eon’s Cosmic Encounter.15 Described by co-designer Peter Olotka as
having been conceived as “the anti–Risk” (2010, p. 285), Cosmic Encounter
begins with the simple premise of several players adopting the role of an alien
race, each having control of a system of planets. Throughout the course of
the game, each player attempts to establish bases on planets belonging to the
other players through a series of randomly designated attacks. By enlisting
the assistance of other players, both the attacker and defender are able to bol-
2. Anglo-American Hobby Board Games 1960 –1995 39
ster forces to aid in their goals. What makes the game so unique, however, is
the introduction of variable player powers, an element that dramatically over-
turned one of the principal tenets of game design:
The impact of Cosmic Encounter simply cannot be ignored. The original con-
cept it introduced has permeated every genre of gaming from war and card
games to video games. It is a single, simple idea: every player is allowed to
break a rule in a unique manner. Prior to Cosmic Encounter every player in
every game played by the same rules set; equality was assured. With Cosmic
Encounter every player began with an identical set up and a card that allowed
them to “break” one of the rules of the game. This was revolutionary [Shapiro,
2003].
Cosmic Encounter has been cited by a number of designers as an early influence
and has had a notable effect on the evolution of board games generally.16
Beyond the innovation of player powers, the game brought to the fore diplo-
matic negotiations around and above the actual game board, with players
jostling for the opportunity to be involved in individual battles. Cosmic
Encounter has spawned no less than nine expansions and three English lan-
guage reprints,17 while numerous fan-created variants add still more replaya-
bility to the game.
Shortly after the initial success of Cosmic Encounter, Avalon Hill com-
Fantasy Flight Games’ 2008 re-issue of Cosmic Encounter (image by Simon Hold-
ing, courtesy Fantasy Flight Games).
40 EUROGAMES
missioned the Eon team to develop a game set in the fictional world of Frank
Herbert’s Dune books. Like Cosmic Encounter, Dune (Eberle et al., 1979)
offered each player the opportunity to play as a unique faction in a fictional
world, with each assigned variable powers, effectively reinforcing the relation-
ship to the original novels. Eon’s design team of Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge
and Peter Olotka have achieved a somewhat legendary status within the gam-
ing community, further enhanced by later innovative titles such as the
evolution-themed Quirks (1980) and Borderlands (1982), a complex mix of
resource management, trade and diplomacy which introduced the idea of
rotating the start player in each round, a mechanic borrowed from card games
that remains commonplace in European designs (Levy, 1999).
they then decided to publish their own games and being familiar with my
games three of them got into the Games Workshop range [2008].
Carver’s first game was originally a Dungeons and Dragons–inspired roll-and-
move game which had players collecting gems, but since Games Workshop
had recently acquired the rights to produce a game based upon the BBC
television series Doctor Who (Carver, 2007), a theme change resulted in Doctor
Who: The Game of Time and Space (Carver, 1980). It was Carver’s Warrior
Knights (1985b) and Blood Royale (1987), however, that were to have more
long-lasting appeal. A game of negotiation and conflict in the medieval
period, Warrior Knights’ enduring popularity is evidenced by a 2006 re-
implementation (Faidutti et al., 2006).22 Blood Royale 23 is a lengthy political
negotiation game with elements of role-playing that Carver had intended to
be a game system similar to that found in role-playing games.
The most successful of Games Workshop’s forays into board game pub-
lishing, however, was another role-playing hybrid, Talisman (Harris, 1983).
Designer Robert Harris originally conceived Talisman as a way of allowing
players to enjoy the role-playing experience without the intensive preparation
typically associated with the form:
I had it in mind to come up with a way we could have all the excitement of a
roleplaying adventure without all the hard work of creating characters and
drawing maps. At the back of my mind was a game I had designed while still
a pupil at Morgan Academy in Dundee. It was called “Rectocracy” and
involved each player taking on the character of one of the teachers. You moved
around the board, gradually working your way towards the centre, where you
would try to make yourself Rector (headmaster/principal) of the school. I had
a notion that I could use a similar layout to make a fantasy adventure game
[Harris, 2007].
Essentially a simple roll-and-move game, many gamers both in the U.S. and
the U.K. remember Talisman fondly, perhaps due to the way it blended the
familiar themes of fantasy roleplay with mechanics reminiscent of mainstream
family games. The first imprint of the game spawned six expansions24 and
three subsequent editions, the most recent by Fantasy Flight Games in 2008.
As well as these original designs, Games Workshop also licensed the Swedish
design Drakborgen (Bonds and Glimne, 1985), a competitive dungeon-delving
game with superficial similarities to TSR’s Dungeon!, retitled DungeonQuest
for the English-speaking market.
The company also produced versions of Cosmic Encounter and Quirks in
collaboration with U.S.–Based Eon, and a version of David Watts’ 1973 design
Railways Rivals. Railway Rivals is generally considered the first modern railway
game and has spawned a number of similar titles in the U.S., most notably
the Mayfair series of crayon rail games. Beginning in 1980 with Empire Builder
2. Anglo-American Hobby Board Games 1960 –1995 43
(Bromley and Fawcett, 1980), the Mayfair rails games, like Railway Rivals,
allowed players to create their own train routes by drawing on a specially lam-
inated board. Unlike the share-driven model of Tresham’s 18XX games, the
emphasis in the crayon rails series is that of moving goods efficiently around
a network. The series has seen numerous variations and new titles continue
to be released.25
While companies such as Games Workshop were reprinting American
designs, so too were American companies distributing the more successful
European titles. The 1980s saw Avalon Hill reprint games such as Tresham’s
Civilization and 1829,26 along with the political negotiation game Kremlin
(Hostettler, 1988), considered the first modern German language game to be
reprinted in English (Scherer-Hoock, 2003).27 Other notable Avalon Hill
designs of the period include Gunslinger (Hamblen, 1982), a second-by-second
simulation of gunfighting in the Old West, the chariot racing Circus Maximus
(Greenwood and Matheny, 1979), and a 1990 reprint of Derek Carver’s self-
published auction game Showbiz (1985a).28
Smaller U.S. companies were also responsible for a growing number of
The fourth edition of Talisman by Fantasy Flight Games (image by David Dudley,
courtesy Fantasy Flight Games).
44 EUROGAMES
son and Alex Randolph game). To me, companies like 3M (Feudal) Avalon
Hill (Dune, Britannia, Gangsters, Merchant of Venus, Gunslinger), Mayfair (The
Keep, Demo Derby), Eon (Cosmic Encounter, Borderlands, Quirks), Hartland
Trefoil Ltd. (Civilization, Spanish Main), and even Wizard Magazine (King of
the Table Top, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space) had their finger on
the pulse of streamlining and modernizing the conflict game [2006].
Sid Sackson and Alex Randolph were responsible for designing some of
the first titles that would retrospectively be referred to as eurogames. Impor-
tantly, these designs were not focused on the simulation of armed conflict,
having instead more abstract gameplay with an emphasis on the game system
rather than the theme. Francis Tresham too produced deep engaging games
that did not rely on direct conflict, spawning a myriad of imitators, both ana-
logue and digital. Wargame designers, responding to the growth of the hobby,
published multiplayer games that encouraged negotiation and diplomacy
rather than statistical verisimilitude. As noted, a number of European designers
have acknowledged the work of the team behind Cosmic Encounter as signifi-
cant in their approach to design. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, hobby
board game designs shifted away from lengthy two-player games towards mul-
tiplayer games with an emphasis on sociability and playability over simulation.
While Huzzey’s assertion is perhaps correct in terms of mass-market games,
hobby board game design left a lasting mark on the modern culture of board
gaming. Perhaps more importantly, the popularity and diversity of the titles
discussed here indicates a growing market for board games accompanying the
general growth of the hobby gaming sector. This established community of
adult gamers would provide an ideal environment for the dissemination of
eurogames in the late 1990s.
3
Gesellschaftsspiele —
Gaming in Germany
Like novels, games don’t come out of the blue. They come from a given designer,
at a given time, in a given social situation.— Bruno Faidutti, in Appelcline,
2006a
46
3. Gesellschaftsspiele — Gaming in Germany 47
From the mid–19th century, the growth of the toy market was matched
by a similar interest in board and table games. In 1883, Bavarian bookseller
Otto Robert Maier established a publishing company specializing in the pro-
duction of instruction pamphlets for architects and craftspeople (Hanson,
2006, p. 44). After early successes, Maier turned to the production of games,
first commissioning a series of eight games for adults and then, in 1884, A
Trip Around the World, a board game based upon the Jules Verne novel Around
the World in Eighty Days (Hauser, 1993). The game quickly became popular
on the German market, partly due to the high quality of the tin figurines and
printed board that Maier commissioned from independent suppliers. By 1892,
Maier had sold his bookstore and decided to focus exclusively on his thriving
publishing business, which he registered under the name Ravensburger. Rec-
ognizing the growth of the games market in Germany, Maier registered a sub-
sidiary company, Ravensburger Games, in 1900 (Hauser, 1993). By 1902 the
Ravensburger catalogue featured approximately 100 games alongside the estab-
lished line of books, and in 1912 the company began translating games into
other European languages. Choosing not to compete with successful compa-
nies in the general toy industry, Maier focused on board games and puzzles.
By the time of the First World War, Germany dominated the worldwide
production of toys (Burton, 1997, p. 9). The war brought production to a
halt, as factories were turned over to arms production, and international mar-
kets were rendered inaccessible. Although Germany would recover somewhat,
by the end of the war the domination of world toy markets was lost. Subse-
quently, and at the point of apparent recovery, the onset of the Great Depres-
sion and the rise to power of the National Socialist Party further damaged
the industry, as racial policies forced a large number of Jewish manufacturers
to leave the country. German toys were boycotted in many countries; and
with the onset of the Second World War, those factories that remained were
once again turned over to the production of arms, with a general ban on toy
production issued in 1943 (Schwarz, 2003).
By the time the war came to a close in 1945, many of Germany’s factories
had been destroyed, and those that had previously made toys and games were
no exception. However, recovery was relatively swift, and the West German
toy industry increased exports from eight million to over 100 million DM
between 1948 and 1953. In 1950 the International Toy Fair was held in Nurem-
berg for the first time, cementing the reputation of the region and the country
as central to the world’s toy industry (“Spielwarenmesse,” 2008). Throughout
the 1950s this successful growth continued, resulting in Schuco becoming the
largest toy manufacturer in Europe over the course of the decade (Schwarz,
2003). In 1959, William Hurter’s Memory was the hit of the Nuremberg Toy
Fair, establishing Ravensburger as an international presence in family games
3. Gesellschaftsspiele — Gaming in Germany 49
(Hanson, 2006, p. 45).1 Although the 1970s saw sufficient competition from
Asian and American toy producers to change Germany to a largely toy-
importing country, German manufacturers continued to offer high quality
products on the international market (Schwarz, 2003). The observation that
German culture was seen as being a key to rapid economic recovery following
the war (Carter, 1997, p. 22), and that the games industry recovered so quickly,
suggests a perception of games as a vital part of the German national iden-
tity.
By the 1970s however, German game companies were presented with a
problem. As Stuart Dagger notes, while the larger British and American com-
panies were increasingly relying on tried and tested family games, German
publishers did not have this option available:
It is of significance that Ravensburger, the biggest of the German companies,
did not own the German rights to Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble and so on. So
for them the defensive business option of focusing just on these wasn’t possi-
ble. In order to survive they had to go on being creative. This would also have
made them willing listeners and supporters when the originators of the Spiel
des Jahres and the Essen Games Fair began their efforts to improve and pro-
mote German board games [Dagger, 2008].
Ravensburger, principally a producer of family games, began to nurture an
in-house design team to develop games that were German in origin. To retain
a regional identity in an arena increasingly dominated by multinational cor-
porations, it was clear that local ingenuity would be required. Fortunately,
game companies were assisted in their efforts by a media that reflects the estab-
lished cultural significance of games in Germany.
lished in 1981 by Reiner Müller, provides reviews of new games along with
game commentary, news from game fairs, and, occasionally, original games
and expansions by recognized designers such as Reiner Knizia, Sid Sackson
and Alex Randolph. With a print run of approximately 13,000 (Galanti,
2005), the magazine publishes special almanac issues that focus upon a single
designer and/or game.2 Similar magazines include Spielerei, which organizes
the annual Hippoodice game design competition (Werneck, 2004), and Fair-
play, established in 1987, which, as well as taking over the voting for the
Deutscher Spiel Preis, runs the Fairplay poll, an on-the-spot ballot held to
gauge consumer interest in new releases at the Essen games fair.
Game Awards
The most tangible outcome of the German media’s support of gaming
culture, however, is the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year), without doubt
the most influential board and table game award in the world. Indeed, it has
been suggested that a Spiel des Jahres–winning game can expect a tenfold
increase in sales through its association with the award (Kramer, 2000b).3
The prize was established in 1978 by a group of specialist journalists with the
purpose of “promot[ing] the cultural asset games [sic], to stimulate the idea
of playing games with family and friends and to give orientation within the
large choice of games available” (“Spiel des Jahres,” 2008). Active jury member
and co-founder Tom Werneck describes the inception of the award:
Our vision was to put such a strong pressure on the game industry that they
struggle to bring the highest possible level of quality on a competitive market.
When we look back now, 30 years later, we see that it worked out.... It
worked out because the award Spiel des Jahres had such a strong influence on
sales figures (factor 100!) that it worked like a sting in their flesh inflaming
competition [2008].4
In addition to the awards process, the organization Spiel des Jahres e.V
contributes to the gaming community in Germany through active promotion
in the media, support of social institutions in adopting games, and the award-
ing of grants to game designers and scholars. The award jury is comprised of
members of the German media who have “proven their competence and their
power of judgment” in the assessment of games, with individuals who are
directly involved in the gaming industry specifically excluded from partici-
pation (“Spiel des Jahres,” 2008). Although the award offers no financial com-
pensation, the publishers of the winning game are entitled to use the
prestigious Spiel des Jahres emblem in promotion and packaging, for which
they must pay the organization a licensing fee. This license fee is the primary
3. Gesellschaftsspiele — Gaming in Germany 51
Since 1991 the jury has also awarded the Kinderspiel des Jahres (Children’s
Game of the Year), which is decided upon via a separate selection process.
Additionally, the jury often awards special prizes (Sonderpreis) which recognize
particular elements of a game, such as the Sonderpreis Schönes Spiel (Most
Beautiful Game), awarded frequently until 1997, Sonderpreis Literatur im Spiel
(Best Use of Literature in a Game)5 and Sonderpreis Komplexes Spiel (Best
Complex Game). In 2011 a new award, Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoissuer’s
Game of the Year), was introduced to “give guidance to those people who
have already been playing games for a longer time and are experienced in
learning new rules” (“Kennerspiel des Jahres,” 2011).
In English-speaking countries it is difficult to appreciate the importance of
the Spiel des Jahres in Germany. Although there are awards in the United States
(e.g., International Gamers Award,6 Origins Award),7 these tend to be directed
at hobby gamers, while the Spiel des Jahres has established a reputation for focus-
ing on games that have a broader appeal to those outside the gaming hobby.
Consequently, the jury tends to award those games that can be played within a
family setting, eschewing overly complex games and those whose thematic appeal
might restrict the audience. More complex hobbyist games are explicitly
addressed by the Deutscher Spiele Preis, a separate award originated in 1990 by
the German magazine Die Pöppel-Revue, whose votes are gathered from industry
members and gaming clubs throughout Germany and, since 2001, via worldwide
votes cast through the Internet and readers of Fairplay magazine.8 The Essen
Feather is awarded in the same ceremony as the Deutscher Spiele Preis, with an
emphasis on the clarity and presentation of game rules (“Essen Feather,” 2008).
Other countries have followed the German lead in creating awards similar
to the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiel Preis. As mentioned, the USA
has the International Gamers Award, initiated by games writer Greg Schloesser,
which has a similar focus to that of the Deutscher Spiele Preis and is judged,
52 EUROGAMES
The Coaster Proclamation. Signatories are (top left, vertical) Reinhold Wittig,
Helge Andersen, Hajo Bücken, Erwin Glonegger, Dirk Hanneforth, Knut
Michael Wolf, Wolfgang Kramer, Joe Nikisch, Gilbert Obermeier, Alex Randolph,
John Rüttinger, Roland Siegers and a not yet identified author (courtesy Christian
Beiersdorf and the Spiele-Autoren-Zunft).
54 EUROGAMES
The SAZ is currently the largest organization of game designers in the world
and is now responsible for organizing workshops held at the Goettingen
Spieleautorentreffen. Previous chairmen have included notable designers such
as Wolfgang Kramer, Reiner Knizia and Marcel André Casasola Merkle. Mem-
bers are permitted entry to the annual Nuremberg Toy Fair (an event only
open to industry members) and the International Game Designer Conference
in Haar, as well as to a large number of other organized events throughout
the year (“Spieleautorenzunft,” 2008). Since its inception, many successful
games have been initially presented to publishers at Goettingen (Alden, 2008),
along with a number of awards: der Inno-Spatz (innovation sparrow — awarded
by the City of Goettingen), der Förderpreis für Nachwuchsautoren (prize for
new authors awarded by Spiel des Jahres e.V ) and der “Alex” (named after Alex
Randolph and awarded by die Spieleautorenzunft, which recognizes promotion
of gaming in the media).
Another highly regarded award is that for the Hippodice Autorenwettbe-
werb (Hippo Dice Authors Competition). Established in 1986, Hippodice
Autorenwettbewerb was initially responsible for the fanzine Speilerei. In 1988,
the club launched a game design competition that would subsequently become
an important award within the game design community. Voted upon by a jury
made up of industry figures, several winners and runners up have gone on to be
successfully published, most notably the negotiation game Chinatown (Hartwig,
1999), Werner Hodel’s Spiel des Jahres–winning Mississippi Queen (1998a),14
Christwart Conrad’s game of commodity speculation in the wine industry, Vino15
(1999), and, more recently, Thomas Odenhoven’s Portobello Market (2007), a
short game of area movement and control that was initially themed around rail-
ways in East India (Aleknevicus, 2001a; “Hippodice Spieleclub,” 2008).
Game Shows
For the lover of games, there is nothing quite like the spiel.— Schloesser, 2008c
year, the largest of which is the Essen Games Fair. Officially titled Interna-
tionale Spieltage but known to hobby gamers as simply “the spiel” or “Essen,”
the Essen Games Fair is the largest non-digital gaming convention in the
world. Established in 1983, the fair was originally titled the German Games
Con, with the objective of providing an event where people could “meet and
play together and demonstrate that gaming was a vital part of the German
culture” (Schloesser, 2008c). After initial skepticism over the level of public
interest, the event grew considerably and eventually moved into the Essen
Exhibition Centre (Messe Essen) in order to accommodate growing numbers.
The spiel is traditionally held in late October and, along with the Nuremberg
Toy Fair in February, is the principal showcase for newly released board games
in the world. Unlike Nuremberg, the show is open to consumers and conse-
quently attracts crowds of close to 150,000 people over four days (“Interna-
tionale Spieltage,” 2008).
In gaming culture, the spiel has acquired something of a mythical rep-
utation as the premiere board gaming event in the world. Drawing publishers
from many countries, the event also plays host to the Deutscher Spiel Preis,
the Essen Feather and, more recently, the International Gamers Awards. Fol-
lowing the success of Essen, several other fairs have appeared which offer an
in shaping the game designs that emerged during this period (Huzzey, 2002;
Heli, 2007).
While in the USA wargames proved extremely successful in the latter
half of the 20th century, in post-war West Germany the combination of public
and governmental aversion to war-related products, along with strict laws
prohibiting the depiction of Nazi symbology on entertainment products,
meant that titles which were popular among hobbyists in other countries
received scant attention in Germany. As gaming writer Moritz Eggert observes,
“The generation that grew up in the bombed up remains of the ‘Reich’ didn’t
have ‘Kriegsspiele’18 on their mind when they became rebellious teenagers”
(Eggert, 2006b). The most commonly cited example used to exemplify game
manufacturers’ response to this aversion is that of the mainstream wargame
Risk. Whereas in the rest of the world the game was subtitled one of “global
domination,” the German version tasked the players with “liberat[ing] the
world” (Freund, 2005).
Perhaps as influential as the cultural taboo surrounding conflict was the
German law that prohibited the importation of war-related toys (Varney,
2000, p. 387). Although wargames were available in Germany, designers
walked a fine line with regards to the depiction of historically accurate insignia,
as evidenced by the case of game designers Harry Rowland and Greg Pinder.
Copies of their game Days of Decision III (2004) were confiscated and
destroyed due to the inclusion of a small swastika symbol on a counter depict-
ing Hitler (Eggert, 2006b; Lanza, 2006, p. 20). This combination of cultural
stigma and legal prohibition gave rise to the feeling that stores electing to
carry American wargames were “teetering on the edge of doing something
illegal,” with some particularly controversial games being discussed on national
television (Eggert, 2006b). British games writer Brian Walker describes this
effect in a review of the 1988 Essen Spiel:
Over to the Das Spiel stand now. This Hamburg based company is one of the
best known games shops in Germany, though their stand is bereft of home
grown products. Their speciality is importing and translating English and
American games. A large selection of American wargames is kept discreetly
under the counter, rather like the X-rated videos at your local newsagent
[1988].
As Järvinen observes, any game with a war theme brings “a discourse of ethnic
conflict into the game” (2009, p. 283). With the weight of recent history in
Germany, it is understandable that both commercial and cultural considera-
tions have played a part in shaping the work of aspiring designers who were
raised in what political historian Thomas Berger describes as a broader “culture
of anti-militarism” (1998).
Arguably, it is this aversion to themes and mechanics of direct conflict
58 EUROGAMES
that led to the popularity of the 3M range of games when they were released in
Germany. Although appealing to an adult market, few of the 3M games specifi-
cally called upon direct conflict in either theme or mechanism. Writer Rick Heli
addresses the influence that these games might have had on aspiring designers:
Taking Sackson’s Acquire as their model, they [German publishers] created
what they called Gesellschaftspiele, society games. The message was clear. The
games are not about the lawlessness and disorder of war, but the normal oper-
ation of civilized society [2004].
In the light of the influences discussed here, game designers in Germany were
implicitly tasked with the development of board games that avoided overt
themes of war and conflict. This was not an easy undertaking, as designer
Franz-Benno Delonge explains:
If you want to move away from the idea of confrontation, which is classically
at the core of nearly every game, then you have to come up with something
really new as an alternative [in Freund, 2005].
The alternative that Delonge speaks of is evident in the design sensibil-
ities that have come to typify the eurogame genre. The games that emerged
from this time and place focused on individual development and comparative
achievement rather than the direct conflict that typifies Anglo-American
designs of the period. A number of designers have alluded to this tendency
in their work. Wolfgang Kramer describes as one of the guiding principles in
his work that
players act constructive in order to improve their own results. They do not act
destructive and destroy the playing of their opponents. In my games a player
damages another player only then, when he makes a good move for himself.
The sense of his move is to help himself and not to damage the game of the
other player [in Yu, 2011b].
Klaus Teuber summarizes the appeal of his game, Die Siedler von Catan,
thusly:
I ... believe that most people in the world prefer to engage in constructive
rather than destructive activities. The world of Catan is built on the philoso-
phy of peaceful building, rather than war and violence. So the majority of
people, who believe in constructive aspects in life, probably like playing Catan
also for that reason [“Interview with Klaus Teuber,” 2005].
Finally, designer Reiner Knizia is even more direct in discussing his own
aversion to conflict:
I don’t like bloody games. I think we can get better missions out into the
world of gaming for the youngsters and the old guys than motivating people
to shoot each other [in Alden and Solko, 2009a].
3. Gesellschaftsspiele — Gaming in Germany 59
A Culture of Play
The very size of the German game market alone witnesses to the fact that
games are an important part of Germany’s culture.— Stöckmann and Jahnke,
2008a, p. 101
try. Gaming writer Mario Lanza notes that most Germans consider gaming
a “good, healthy pastime” (2006, p. 20) while designer Reiner Knizia offers
a similar perspective on the importance of games in the family environment:
You need to understand that playing games in Germany is synonymous with
“family values.” It is good to play games and games are quite frequently
bought as presents. It’s seen as a very valuable way of spending time together
as a family. Children grow up with a natural learning of games and as they
grow up they see more and more games and become fascinated with them. I
think that’s a culture which is very valuable in Germany and creates a big
market for many designers and many game companies [in Glenn, 1999a].
As a result of this attitude, the adult play of commercial board and table
games does not suffer the kind of marginalization that is typically seen in
other Western countries. Where in the USA and the U.K. board gaming is
typically confined to small groups of hobbyists, in Germany the market is far
more diverse. Games journalist Rick Thornquist describes the differences
through his experience at U.S. and German conventions:
If you go to Origins or GenCon [U.S. conventions] it is mainly a gamer type
of convention and you do mainly see gamer geeks, but Essen20 is not like that
at all. It’s very much regular people, families, teenagers, kids ... it’s everybody,
and it’s amazing to see all these people playing the games that we play all the
time.
Because the Germans play games so much it’s really a convention for every-
body and not just for gaming geeks [in Alden and Solko, 2004a].
A variety of arguments have been put forward to explain the broader
acceptance of gaming within German culture. GAMA21 executive director
Gordon Calleja points to the difficulties of surviving two world wars, sug-
gesting economic motivations for pursuing inexpensive entertainment options
(in Alden and Solko, 2009b). Games writer Moritz Eggert has suggested that
the German predisposition towards gaming stems from a strong culture of
hospitality:
Why do Germans like games? I think there are several factors at work here.
One is the German concept of Gemütlichkeit [difficult to translate, but,
roughly, “hospitality, coziness”], which means that being invited over and
spending an evening with your neighbours or your friends is seen as socially
desirable [Heli, 2007].
Although such an emphasis on sociability is recognizable in any culture, it is
only in Germany, claims Richard Huzzey, that “families savour the latest
[game] designs” (2002). Whatever the reason for this sense of appreciation
the result, Weiland Freund writes, is that “perhaps no other German cultural
industry does as well, in relative terms, as board games” (2005).
It is clear that German culture has a unique relationship with board and
3. Gesellschaftsspiele — Gaming in Germany 61
table game play. Not only do Germans purchase more games per capita than
any other nation, their cultural value is reflected in the game collections such
as those held by the Deutsches Spiele-Archiv, the Bayerische Spiele-Archiv and
the Deutsches Spielemuseum. Supported by Spiel des Jahres e.V, Deutsches Spiele-
Archiv in Marburg was created in 1978 as a research center for the study and
documentation of board and card games.22 Housing one of the largest collec-
tions of non-digital games in the world (approximately 30,000), the archive
also holds a vast library of related literature, including catalogues and
brochures, primarily from the post-war era. The archive was established with
the following goals:
From these goals it is evident that the organization places a special empha-
sis on the connection between gaming and the family, and the importance of
promoting this aspect of games through the media. Alongside the Deutsches
Spiele-Archiv is the smaller Bayerische Spiele-Archiv in Haar. Originally estab-
lished to duplicate the functions of the larger archive to insure against loss,
the two archives now function independently (Werneck, 2008). Closely related
to the archives is the Deutsches Spielemuseum in Chemnitz. Housing 50,000
games from around the world, along with catalogues and documents dating
back five centuries, the museum originated in 1986 in Hamburg, moving to
its current location in 1994. The museum maintains traveling exhibits that
have seen exposure throughout Europe, as well as hosting special events in
the city (“Deutsches Spielemuseum,” 2008).
the game design community and the hobby in general. Along with an active
gaming community, the principal influences upon this positive perception
have been the media, game awards, an active game design community, game
shows and the presence of institutions which reflect the value of games as cul-
tural artifacts (Kramer, 2000a; Werneck, 2004).
The German emphasis upon games that could be played by both children
and adults alike cannot be overstated. From the outset, German game design-
ers were mandated by cultural and commercial considerations with designing
games that anyone could play — thus the need for short concise rules, man-
ageable playing times and culturally acceptable themes. Where in the USA
and the U.K. family games remained a fairly stagnant market in terms of orig-
inality, in Germany the fact that domestic companies were continuing to pro-
duce new titles resulted in a culture that was more accepting of innovation:
The market for board games is immense in the German speaking countries,
because consumers show a lot of interest, and there is a great demand for new
(forms of ) games. The current generation, which grew up with the
intellectually-demanding board games, is selective and willing to deal with
more sophisticated games [Stöckmann and Jahnke, 2008a, p. 100].
As quality games began to appear in increasing numbers, so the level of game
design moved further in innovative directions to keep pace with the demands
and expectations of a growing audience who have come to “appreciate systems
innovation” (Costikyan, 2004).
While in the USA and the U.K. the family games market was largely a
site of repetition and brand licensing, in Germany it was, in contrast, the site
and impetus for innovation. The importance of the acceptance of more sophis-
ticated titles lies in the fact that by the time German “family” games received
attention within the USA and the U.K., it was small groups of hobby gamers
who had sufficient experience and understanding to appreciate the quality of
the games. Thus it was largely word of mouth within hobby game commu-
nities that led to the gradual emergence of German games upon the world
stage. Moreover, it was not only game players who would come to embrace
the form and elevate the genre to its current position, but designers working
throughout the world who would take their cues from what would soon
become known as eurogames.
4
Every decade a new form of the hobby emerges and recruits the bulk of the
new gamers. In the 1960s the fad was wargames, in the 1970s, RPGs, computer
games exploded in the 1980s, the 1990s brought CCGs, and the new century
has seen the German game phenomenon.— De Rosa, 1998
The state of the gaming hobby in Germany was not altogether dissim-
ilar to that of the USA and the U.K. during the 1970s (Dagger, 2003). How-
ever, subject to the influences described in the previous chapter, between 1982
and 1994 the German game market experienced strong growth, often at a rate
of 10 percent or more (Kramer, 2000a). A number of newer imprints were
introduced by more established publishing houses,1 while others came from
new companies entering the growing market.2
Throughout this period German designers produced a succession of
innovative and domestically successful titles. Although the broader Eng-
lish-speaking gaming community did not have ready access to these games
until 1996, small groups of game enthusiasts, firstly in the U.K. and later in
the USA, were following the development of German games long before
they became a staple of hobbyist culture. Importantly, as word of this move-
ment spread through the hobby gaming community, the rise of the Inter-
net in the late 1990s enabled the dissemination of information on a global
scale.
Rather than the result of a concerted marketing effort, the worldwide
popularity of German games principally arose through word of mouth, with
publishers rising to meet a demand generated by enthusiastic hobbyists. These
hobbyist communities were fundamental to the emergence of eurogames as a
mainstay of gaming culture.
63
64 EUROGAMES
Valley Games’ 2006 re-issue of Die Macher (image by Simon Holding, courtesy
Valley Games).
success importing European titles such as 1829, Civilization and Railway Rivals
(Scherer-Hoock, 2003). Close by, in Boston, ex–Avalon Hill designer Alan Moon
had established the North Shore Gaming Club, largely through advertisements
in The General.5 Moon had become interested in German designs during his
time at Avalon Hill and subsequently made contact with English gaming writer
Brian Walker, who was familiar with the growing number of games now coming
out of Germany. Throughout the late 1980s the North Shore Gaming Club con-
tinued to expand, and Moon’s group increasingly played more German designs:
German games were definitely there from the start. The club was sort of a
third Avalon Hill games, a third Axis and Allies type games, and a third Ger-
man games. By that point, I was mostly interested in German games; my
interest in war games had been going down ever since playing my first game of
Kremlin [Moon in Scherer-Hoock, 2003].
In 1988, Brian Walker launched Games International, the first British
magazine whose coverage was broadly inclusive of German games. Walker
produced sixteen editions of the magazine before commercial failure led to a
name change in 1990 (Strateg y Plus) and a decision to alter the coverage of
the magazine to computer games. At the time of its inception, however, Games
International was unique in its coverage of German games, borne largely out
of Walker’s interest in the genre:
66 EUROGAMES
Meanwhile, in the U.K. one writer for the defunct Games International,
Mike Siggins, began to formulate ideas for another magazine. Siggins had
4. From German Games to Eurogames 67
been introduced to German games in 1988 when Brian Walker had shown
him the Walter Toncar bicycle racing game 6-Tage Rennen10 (1986) at a small
games convention in the U.K. Siggins, a former wargamer, was immediately
taken with the German design:
From that point I never looked back, and I still cherish the feeling that this
German Game, the very first of hundreds, imparted. Even now, it is hard to
quantify the impact of the European game titles and but for them I might still
be playing long, turgid stuff like Civilization [Siggins in Vasel, 2005c].
In October 1989 Siggins launched the most influential publication in
the promotion of German style gaming in Britain, Sumo. The first issue, intro-
duced at Essen Spiel that year, was a stapled-together fanzine photocopied
onto A5 sheets of paper and distributed by mail. Siggins made Sumo’s raison
d’être explicit in the first issue:
For some time I have been thinking about publishing a newsletter to cover the
recent influx of European games onto the U.K. games scene. There can be no
doubt that quality games such as Sechs Tage Rennen and Die Macher have
made a substantial impact on our game playing habits and expectations, yet
there are very few people reviewing these games in-depth or providing associ-
ated services such as rules translations [1989].
Charles Vasey, Mike Clifford, Stuart Dagger, Derek Carver, David Far-
quhar and Alan How were regular contributors and reviewers in the magazine,
which would eventually run for 44 issues over eight years.11 Interestingly, Sig-
gins notes that a quarter of the subscriptions were from Germany (1990).
Sumo immediately gathered attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and the
letters page attracted lively commentary from enthusiasts and active designers
such as Americans Richard Berg, Don Greenwood and Alan Moon, and Eng-
lishmen Richard Breese12 and Francis Tresham. Running alongside Sumo was
Siggins’ Rules Bank, a service he had started in 1989 to provide gamers with
translated rules for imported games. He would seek out accurate translations
and then make them available by request for the price of a stamped, addressed
envelope. At its peak, Siggins was posting out 50 envelopes a week, supple-
menting translations provided by Just Games’ Mark Green and others. A letter
to Sumo suggests this was a badly needed service:
Some of the English “translations” circulating with German games are, to be
honest, rubbish. A number I’ve seen seem to have been written by people who
couldn’t read German but relied on writing down what they remembered from
someone else who told them what they’d heard from ... etc. [Key, 1991].
Meanwhile, the growth of the Internet in the late 1980s offered another
way for predominantly English-speaking gamers to discuss the hobby. Estab-
lished in 1987, the newsgroup rec.games.board was the first dedicated forum
68 EUROGAMES
for hobbyists. Although sparsely populated for the first two years of its exis-
tence, by 1989 the group had begun to flourish, with a range of discussion
topics mostly revolving around wargaming, abstract strategy games and play-
by-email gaming (PBEM). The first mention of German games is found in a
lengthy review of Die Macher by Avalon Hill designer Jennifer Schlickbernd,
appearing on the newsgroup in October 1989. Although this review appears
4. From German Games to Eurogames 69
In 1995 Kosmos released Klaus Teuber’s latest game, Die Siedler von
Catan. The game combined development, trading and a dose of luck, casting
players as explorers on the fictional island of Catan. Upon release, the game
was an unqualified success in Germany, garnering the 1995 Spiel des Jahres,
Deutscher Spiele Preis and Essen Feather, along with the U.S.-based Origins
Award the following year. Five years after its release, in 2000, the game was
still the best-selling game in Germany (Levy, 2001a). Subsequently it has
inspired a variety of expansions and related games that have sold upwards of
15 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling and most widely
known example of the eurogame to date (Curry, 2009).
The first copies of Die Siedler von Catan to enter the U.S. were imported
by Ray Pfeifer’s R&D Games in 1995 and sold at Alan Moon’s Gathering of
Friends that year. Pfiefer imported further copies for Avalon Hill’s annual
convention, Avaloncon, where the game met with an immediate and enthu-
siastic response:
I remember that year the most played game at Avaloncon wasn’t an Avalon
Hill game; it was Settlers.21 I sold them out of the trunk of my car in the
parking lot at the convention. I remember at one point Jackson Dott came out
to find out what was going on [Pfiefer in Scherer-Hoock, 2003].22
Die Siedler von Catan served as the introduction to German games for
many English-speaking gamers (Levy, 2001a). Within weeks of the game’s
release, word was spreading on the Internet via rec.games.board and Ken Tid-
well’s Game Cabinet. The recognition of Die Siedler von Catan as the first
German game to captivate English-speaking gamers en masse is echoed by
the number of players who now fondly recall the game as their introduction
to the genre. Retailer and gaming writer Michael Barnes describes this impact:
We were blown away. It was the best board game we had ever played — it had
dice, cardplay, trading, interaction, drama, a solid civilization building/devel-
opment theme, and it was just a lot of fun to play in a reasonable amount of
time. I did some research on the internet which lead me to discover that there
was the beginnings of a subculture of eurogame enthusiasts ... of course, at the
time, they were called “German games” [Barnes, 2008b].
Gaming writer Greg Schloesser echoes the sentiment:
My life changed ... when I discovered Settlers of Catan at a local hobby store.
We were captivated, and I began seeking out other “European” titles. El
Grande, Euphrat and Tigris and other classics soon were added to my collec-
tion, and I was smitten [Schloesser, 2008a].
Almost concurrently with the release of Die Siedler von Catan, American
game manufacturer Mayfair Games had decided to investigate the possibility
of producing English language versions of some popular German titles. Game
4. From German Games to Eurogames 73
designer and owner Darwin Bromley had become enamored of German games
and had been importing and selling these on the American market since 1991
(Scherer-Hoock, 2003). Reflecting Mayfair’s association with railway games,
Bromley had imported 1835 (Tresham and Meier-Backl, 1990)23 and
Dampfross, along with a range of games from Dutch company Flying Turtle.
Prices were high due to the cost of import, and the games were simply sold
on, without English rules translations, making for a rather limited market.
Since these factors resulted in less than spectacular sales, Jay Tummelson, an
employee with a history in the role-playing community, suggested including
rules translations with the games, and later that the company consider pub-
lishing English versions (Glenn, 1999b). Subsequently, Tummelson was
charged with obtaining licenses from German manufacturers. Traveling to
Europe, he secured the rights to a variant of Formel Eins (Kramer, 1996a),24
Modern Art, Manhattan, Linie Eins (Dorra, 1995)25 and, somewhat fortu-
itously, the recent Spiel des Jahres winner Die Siedler von Catan. While Tum-
melson argued for the retention of the original German presentation, Bromley
felt that the graphics were not suitable for the U.S. market and commissioned
new artwork before releasing the games in 1996 (Alden and Solko, 2005).
the fabulously successful Settlers of Catan, El Grande was the second part of
the one-two punch that established once and for all that Germany was the
source of the finest games in the world [Levy, 2001c].
Certainly the winners of the key German awards over the next few years
continued to push the boundaries of board game systems and mechanics. The
winners of the 1997 Spiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis were Werner
Hodel’s game of paddleboat racing, Mississippi Queen (1998a) and Teuber’s
game of tile-laying and exploration, Entdecker (1996)26 respectively. The list
of nominations the following year for both awards provides ample evidence
that game designers working in the German style were experiencing a period
of rapid innovation. Alan Moon’s Elfenland (1998), a simplified version of the
earlier White Wind–published Elfenroads (1992), claimed the Spiel des Jahres;
while Reiner Knizia’s tile-laying game of development in the cradle of civi-
lization, Euphrat and Tigris (1997a), was awarded the Deutscher Spiel Preis.
Moreover, among those games nominated for the 1998 awards are Knizia’s
Durch die Wüste (1998a), a lightly-themed area enclosure game somewhat
reminiscent of Go, Wolfgang Kramer and Horst-Rainer Rösner’s area majority
business game Tycoon (1998),27 and the Hans im Glück reprint of Karl-Heinz
Schmiel’s 1986 game Die Macher.
Ironically, just as German games were about to make the leap to English-
speaking markets, Mike Siggin’s Sumo was coming to an end. With growing
work commitments and a mounting disillusionment with playing games, Sig-
gins was offered an opportunity to sell the rights to Sumo to fellow gamers
Theo Clarke and Paul Evans. Clarke and Evans planned to take their own
magazine, Games, Games, Games, to a more professional level, and Siggins,
on the advice of friends, decided to accept (Dagger, 2008). The quirky fanzine
that had alerted many British gamers to German games was no more:
Overall, I think people liked it. They definitely liked the letters. They liked
the hugeness of the average issue.... They liked the lack of computer games.
They liked lists. They liked Mike Clifford. And generally it was popular
because it was honest, interesting and there was nothing like it. Others
reviewed the German games, but there was a mad level of enthusiasm in and
for Sumo, like a bunch of 600 like-minded gamers meeting for a chat. It must
have been responsible for much of the growth in German gamers in the early
nineties, but who knows? [Siggins in Vasel, 2005c].
Games, Games, Games lasted two years before folding due to financial
failure. Meanwhile, Sumo contributors Clifford, Dagger and How had hatched
a plan for “son of Sumo” (Dagger, 2008). Consequently, with Dagger at the
helm as editor, 1998 saw the first issue of Counter, a magazine with similar
production values and content as Sumo. With a current subscription list of
approximately 700 to 800 (the majority in the USA),28 Counter continues to
4. From German Games to Eurogames 75
Ulrich’s highly regarded auction game, Die Fürsten von Florenz, Knizia’s Tadsch
Mahal, and Gerd Fenchel’s intricate game of city development La Città. In
2001, however, Klaus-Jürgen Wrede’s game of tile-placement and area major-
ity, Carcassonne (2000), not only won both major German awards but also
garnered enormous international success on a scale that came close to matching
that of Die Siedler von Catan. Carcassonne has spawned numerous expansions36
and a whole raft of associated games, some created by other well-known
designers such as Leo Colovini and Knizia.37 Like Die Siedler von Catan, Car-
cassonne has become regarded as a “gateway game,” a particularly accessible
game that can be used to introduce non-gamers to German-style games. The
year 2001 is also notable for the release of Reiner Knizia’s cooperative game
Der Herr der Ringe (2000a). Published in the U.S. by Hasbro to capitalize on
the success of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the game was printed in
large quantities, marking the first time that such a complex European-style
design was given wide exposure in the English-speaking mass market.
Another result of the growing availability of eurogames in the USA and
the increased visibility brought about by the Internet was the recognition by
U.S.-based game designers that a distinctive style was emerging, and that the
emulation of that style might be a worthwhile pursuit. In 2001 Americans
Stephen Glenn, Dominic Crapuchettes, and Mike Petty organized the first
Protospiel, a meeting where game designers could playtest games with an
emphasis on German style designs:
The goal was to get game designers together to workshop game ideas. The
name of the convention was chosen because we want to emulate the high
quality of board games that are coming out of Europe (mostly Germany). We
made it very clear that we did not want people to come to the convention
with their latest version of Monopoly or any other roll and move game. Proto-
Spiel was created for game designers who wanted to create games for adults,
not children [Crapuchettes, 2008].
Although the initial event was attended by only a small number of designers,
Protospiel would subsequently provide the development base for a number of
successful games including Glenn’s Spiel des Jahres–nominated Balloon Cup
(2003) and Crapuchettes’ hugely successful party game Wits and Wagers
(2005).
Germany, designers from other European countries had long been active in
the design community.38 As still more designers continued to adopt the general
style, what were once “German games” were now commonly referred to as
“eurogames.”
As Rio Grande continued to leverage established business relationships
to adopt a model of simultaneous publication (Alden and Solko, 2005), new
companies began to spring up to cater to the growing demand for the genre.
In 2002 U.S./French based Days of Wonder began publishing original
European-style games simultaneously in English, French, German and
Korean.39 In 2004 the company was awarded the Spiel des Jahres for Alan
Moon’s Ticket to Ride (2004a), a rail-themed set collection and connection
game that has subsequently seen enormous international success, spawning a
number of sequels40 and expansions.41 In 2003 Utah-based Überplay Enter-
tainment began publishing direct translations of popular European titles
including Ra (Knizia, 1999a), Alhambra (Henn, 2003), China 42 and Hoity
Toity, a re-issue of Teuber’s Adel Verpflichtet.43 Z-Man games, a U.S. company
originally created to resurrect an out-of-print collectible card game, began
publishing translations of successful German games in 2004,44 later incorpo-
rating titles by U.S. designers that were heavily influenced by the European
style.45 Designers working in the USA increasingly opted to incorporate ele-
ments of both design approaches in the production of hybrid games that
blended the Anglo-American taste for highly thematic gameplay with the per-
ceived elegance of European mechanics.46 Hobby games generally began to
reflect the European design style as the influence of the genre spread through
the gaming industry. Even mainstream U.S. manufacturers were not immune
to this influence; in 2006 Mattel released two European-style designs,47 while
Hasbro revised the classic Risk, shortening the playing time and removing the
emphasis on player elimination.48
As eurogames increased in popularity among gaming hobbyists, designs
became increasingly more complex, straying from the family-oriented fare that
had typified early German games. Exemplar of this is Andreas Seyfarth’s game
of colonization and development in the new world, Puerto Rico (2002). Although
too complex to be awarded the 2002 Spiel des Jahres, which for the first time
went to a dexterity game, Villa Paletti (Payne, 2001), Puerto Rico easily claimed
the Deutscher Spiele Preis and, surprisingly, proved more popular with the inter-
national gaming community than that in Germany (Alden and Solko, 2009b).
The Spiel des Jahres continues to award those games that are at the lighter end
of the complexity scale, with winners such as the family-friendly Niagara
(Liesching, 2005); Karen and Andreas Seyfarth’s Thurn und Taxis (2006), a set
collection and connection game themed on the early German Post Office; and
Michael Schacht’s Zooloretto (2007), a board game expanding on the mechan-
78 EUROGAMES
ics of his earlier card game, Coloretto (2003a). Although the jury has always
favored less complex games, more involved games were recognized through a
separate award for best complex game (Sonderpreis Komplexes Spiel ), awarded
in 2006 and 2008 to William Attia’s Caylus (2005) and Uwe Rosenberg’s
Agricola (2007), respectively. The need for a permanent award that acknowl-
edges the increasing complexity of emerging eurogames was met in 2011 with
the establishment of the Kennerspiel des Jahres.
In 2009 the influence of European designs came full circle, with the
Spiel des Jahres awarded to the American-designed and published Dominion
(Vaccarino, 2008), a game that draws heavily on the deck-building mechanics
of collectible card games while also incorporating the broader aesthetics of
eurogame design.49 At the same time, popular eurogames such as Die Siedler
von Catan and Carcassonne began to make substantial in-roads into the main-
stream U.S. board gaming market (Muller, 2009). The most popular of
eurogames, The Settlers of Catan, received coverage in The Washington Post
(Eskin, 2010), The Wall Street Journal (Tam, 2009), The Atlantic (Keys, 2011)
and Wired Magazine (Curry, 2009). In June 2011, versions of the game occu-
pied two out of the top ten spots on Amazon’s list of top selling board games —
a list that was notably devoid of staples such as Monopoly or Risk (Keys, 2011).
Throughout the late 2000s, a number of eurogame titles were successfully
ported to video game consoles. More recently, the rise of touch-enabled mobile
devices, and the concurrent industry shift towards socially-oriented games,
has proven an ideal match for a wide variety of European-style games. In the
space of fifteen years, games that had initially only been of interest to a small
number of hobbyists now seem set to enter the mainstream.
As dedicated gaming hobbyists became aware of the design style emerging
in Germany, it was largely through word of mouth, community uptake and
small start-up companies that these games spread to the broader gaming com-
munity. The fact that awareness of these games was spread in such a way sug-
gests a revolution inspired by the games themselves rather than by the
companies who produced them. Emerging from a cultural context and market
that was geared to produce innovative games for the family demographic, the
aesthetic that originated in Germany has spread to become a significant force
in the niche hobby of board gaming. Not only is this manifest in the genre
now commonly referred to as eurogames, but more generally in the broader
field of tabletop game design. While many hobbyists continue to look to
Europe for the latest releases, the extent of the genre’s influence is seen in the
way it has transformed hobby board and table gaming globally.
5
There exists in the world today a game design movement called eurogame
design. Its roots run back to the 1960s, it began flourishing in the 1980s, and
it spread worldwide in the 1990s.— Berlinger, 2009a
The games that began to appear in Germany in the early 1980s, which
were to subsequently influence the world of tabletop game design and play,
bear a number of recognizable traits that distinguish them from other hobby
games and those in the mass-market. Anecdotally speaking, eurogames tend
to be accessible games that privilege the role of mechanics over theme in
gameplay. They typically facilitate indirect rather than direct conflict, de-
emphasize the role of chance, offer predictable playing times, and are usually
of a high standard in terms of component quality and presentation.
In this chapter I wish to step beyond this anecdotal summary to delimit
the type of game classified as eurogames by analyzing a selection of 139 rep-
resentative titles. This list of games is drawn from the winners and the nom-
ination shortlist of the Spiel des Jahres award from 1995, the year in which Die
Siedler von Catan was first published, through to ten years later in 2005, a
time when eurogames had made strong inroads into global gaming culture.
This selection reflects not only the variety of games that fall under the
eurogame banner, but also those that are considered outstanding examples by
a judging panel that oversaw the rise in popularity of the genre.1 Players per-
ceive eurogames as constituting a genre typified by common conventions,
although they may display a wide variety of traits. Consequently, much of
the analysis presented here consists of the type of necessary generalizations
that are common in any discussion of genre. This chapter will highlight the
way in which eurogames typically emphasize accessibility and individual
accomplishment in mechanics, goals and themes. The intent of this chapter,
then, is to develop a clear description of the type of games to which hobby
gamers can point and say “that is a eurogame.”2
79
80 EUROGAMES
not constitute a part of the game’s formal system, the application of high pro-
duction values is one of the defining traits of eurogames, and one that has
had a strong influence on subsequent Anglo-American productions (Sauer,
2008).
Rulesets in Eurogames
Rules are what games are made from, the abstract raw materials that sep-
arate the contrivance of games from more spontaneous forms of play. In a
broader sense, the rules are the game (Parlett, 1999, p. 3). Like Salen and
Zimmerman (2004, p. 126), Järvinen identifies a number of different rule
forms. While some rules define the initial set-up of the game (the environ-
ment), others describe the ways that players can interact with the system (the
mechanics), the way the system logic functions internally (in the case of board
games, procedures governing component behavior in the environment), and
the over-arching goals of the game. As can be seen from these descriptions,
each of these types of rules is embedded into another element of the game,
an observation that leads Järvinen to conclude that “all different types of rules
have to do with a particular game element” (2009, p. 66). Following this
assertion, while individual rules are not game elements themselves, the ruleset
constitutes an element, as it describes and constrains the behaviors of other
elements within the system.
Before discussing the embodiment of the rules through other elements,
it is important to note a general characteristic of rulesets in eurogames: the
relative simplicity of rules when compared with earlier hobby game designs.
When describing or defining eurogames, writers almost invariably emphasize
the fact that they typically have succinct rules that can be learned in a relatively
5. The Eurogame Genre 83
Mechanics in Eurogames
As Järvinen notes, there is a degree of semantic confusion within game
research and design as to the use of the word mechanic (2009, pp. 247–250).
Designers and game scholars generally use the word mechanic to describe, in
a vague sense, what it is that players do during the play of a game. Salen and
Zimmerman describe the core mechanic of a game as “the essential play activ-
ity players perform again and again in a game” (2004, p. 316). In these terms
the game mechanic describes the principal functional interaction form with
either the game system or other players. In multiplayer competitive games,
this interaction is primarily concerned with the achievement of the game goal,
leading Järvinen to conclude that
Game mechanics is a functional game feature that describes one possible or
preferred or encouraged means with which the player can interact with game
elements as she is trying to influence the game state at hand towards attain-
ment of a goal [pp. 251–252].
In the sense that it is defined here, all games involve one or more mechanics
by which the player can influence the outcome of the game. Through a process
of iterative analysis, Järvinen constructs a list of 40 mechanics that are com-
monly found in games, further delineating between primary mechanics (those
that are available to the player at all times), sub-mechanics (those that are
supportive of the primary mechanics) and modifier mechanics (those that are
available to the player either conditionally or at specific times) (p. 260–263).
One of the distinctive traits of eurogames is the way in which mechanics
are layered in such a way as to create relatively complex systems from a variety
of sub-mechanics. Consequently, and for the sake of clarity, in this analysis
I have chosen to focus on the principal game-defining mechanics and sub-
mechanics that are employed in pursuit of the game goal. Using Järvinen’s
list of 40 mechanics, I have selected the one that best characterizes the primary
mechanics and sub-mechanics of each of the games under examination. Fig-
ures 5.2 and 5.3, then, provide an overview of the principle mechanics
employed in eurogames.
The immediate observation that arises from these results is the degree to
5. The Eurogame Genre 85
which certain mechanics are dominant within the games analyzed, most
notably choosing, placing and point-to-point movement. Indeed, choosing
is both the most common mechanic and sub-mechanic in this sample. While
placement and point-to-point movement are common in most styles of board
games, the identification of choice as the primary mechanic in eurogames
provides an insight into the way in which these games can be differentiated
from other genres. Eurogames typically offer the player a relatively small num-
ber of actions to take on a given turn, balancing each such that these types
of decisions are considered a defining element of the genre (Saari, 2003; Pul-
sipher, 2006; Berlinger, 2009b).
Clearly, most sedentary games involve meaningful choices that impact
upon the game state. However, I use the term here to describe a specific game
mechanic. As an example, Chess involves the player choosing a move from a
large number of possibilities. However, it would be misleading to consider
choosing as the central mechanic of Chess, even if this is, in effect, what the
player spends the majority of time doing. Chess is a game of displacement, a
goal that is achieved primarily through the mechanics of point-to-point move-
ment and capture (Parlett, 1999, p. 12). While choosing from a large number
of possible moves is implied by the rules of the game, these choices stem from
the possibilities enabled by the principal mechanics. In Järvinen’s terms, the
identification of choice as a mechanic stems from the way in which choice is
explicitly embodied in the rules (2009, p. 385). This distinction is particularly
important, as it highlights restricted choice as one of the key elements of
eurogame designs.
As an example of this, in the game Tikal players explore a region of
jungle in Central America, uncovering temples, locating treasure and attempt-
ing to retain that treasure for themselves in order to score points.12 Within
the game a number of different mechanics are utilized (e.g., placing, point-
to-point movement, exploration, exchanging, controlling and bidding).13 On
a player’s turn they may select from a subset of these mechanics; however, the
choice of actions to employ is restricted by a corresponding cost in “action
points,” of which the player only has 10 per turn. The choice of which actions
to perform in a given turn is the core mechanic of the game, explicitly pre-
sented to the player as a restricted choice. Thus, the decision is not one of
how to employ a particular mechanic but rather which mechanic to employ.
The nature of eurogames can also be understood by considering the
mechanics that are largely absent. Indeed, it is particularly noteworthy that
of the 139 games analyzed here, only two involve conquering14 and one attack-
ing/defending.15 Although it would be misleading to suggest that direct conflict
is entirely absent from eurogames,16 it is a defining trait of the genre that
conflict is characteristically afforded by mechanics that only indirectly affect
5. The Eurogame Genre 87
Figure 5.4: Tikal quick reference card showing possible choices and their atten-
dant cost in “action points” (courtesy Wolfgang Kramer, Michael Kiesling,
Ravensburger and Rio Grande Games. © Franz Vohwinkel).
88 EUROGAMES
trading/negotiation with trading and conversing. Area control and set collec-
tion are, in terms of Järvinen’s systemic elements, goals rather than mechanics.
Still, these inconsistencies point to the way in which gamers develop their
own descriptions of game systems without the constraints that underpin more
formalist approaches. In this way they serve to tell us more about the style of
game design and the play they encourage than do strictly taxonomical
approaches to analysis. I will briefly clarify what is typically meant by these
terms as they are understood within the hobby gaming community.
Tile Placement
The term tile placement is used to describe the spatial placement of par-
ticular game components as they are constrained by their relationship to the
board or to other components. While the specific components are most com-
monly tiles, the term has come to be used to describe a number of game com-
ponents that are placed in certain configurations.17 Tile placement itself is not
a particularly innovative game mechanic, with records of Chinese domino
play dating back to at least the tenth century (Kelley and Lugo, 2003, p. 10).
Occasional examples surfaced in the mid–20th century, with the most obvious
and successful example being the word game Scrabble.
In terms of modern hobby games, Sackson’s Acquire stands out for its
innovative use of tile placement to simulate the merging of corporations.
Given the influence of Sackson’s work on eurogame designers, it is not sur-
prising to find this mechanic employed frequently within the genre. Acquire
is an example of tile placement constrained by the relationship between the
shared board and individual tiles. Each tile is assigned a grid reference that
defines where on the central board it can be played.18 The restriction of a pre-
existing board is seen in titles such as Euphrat and Tigris (Knizia, 1997a),
Metro (Henn, 1997), and Chinatown (Hartwig, 1999). In each of these exam-
ples other rules govern or inform the placement of tiles in particular configu-
rations. In Euphrat and Tigris, players develop groups of orthogonally placed
tiles that, subject to the positioning of their player tokens, reward the player
with points. In Metro, tiles are played to establish connections between pre-
designated points on the board.19 Finally, in Chinatown, placement is con-
strained by the simultaneous play of cards that indicate spaces where tiles can
be played. Numerous other examples of this type of spatially bounded tile
placement exist within the genre.
Another form of tile placement is one where the players’ tiles form the
game environment itself through the course of play, unconstrained by a pre-
existing board. The most well known example of this type of game is Car-
cassonne. In Carcassonne, player tiles form a geographical representation of a
90 EUROGAMES
Figure 5.5: Tile placement in Euphrat & Tigris (image by Simon Holding, cour-
tesy Hans im Glück).
Auctions
Auctions are a mainstay of the eurogame genre and are present in a wide
variety of forms.22 In some cases auctions are the core mechanic of the game,23
while more commonly they are implemented as one in a number of interlocking
mechanisms.24 Auctions may involve purchasing resources from the game sys-
tem itself 25 or from other players.26 They may also involve the procurement
5. The Eurogame Genre 91
Trading / Negotiation
Although trading and negotiation have long been a part of business-
themed games, both within mass-market and hobby gaming, a number of
eurogames implement the mechanic in innovative ways. When discussing
trading in terms of the eurogame genre, this mechanic does not refer to merely
exchanging items of equivalent value with the game system itself, but rather
to the combination of negotiation and trade between players that gives rise
to a living market within the game.
In eurogames trading is typically limited to specific game resources that,
through other design features of the game, are generally of a different value
to individual players. For example, in Die Siedler von Catan players are able
to trade with others on their own turn in an attempt to gather the core
resources required for specific buildings and actions. Dependant upon player
92 EUROGAMES
position and strategy, the specific resources will hold different values. Similarly,
in the card game Bohnanza (Rosenberg, 1997), players trade types of bean
seed on their turn and are often driven to negotiate unfavorable trades or even
give away resources due to the constrained mechanics of the game, which
make some cards near-worthless to them yet of value to others. In games such
as these, although trading can be considered one of the core mechanics, it is
typically limited to particular game resources. Thus a player need evaluate
whether a particular trade is beneficial, given a reasonable idea of the worth
of the item to each player.
More interesting, perhaps, is the type of negotiation seen in games such
as Die Händler von Genua (Dorn, 2001a) and Quo Vadis, where the actions
of other players are negotiable. In a sense, players are not only offering goods
for trade, but also services. In these cases, players must not only determine
the worth of different types of resource for individual players, but also the
value of particular actions. Quo Vadis is an archetypal example of this type
of game where actions on a player’s turn are traded for the promise of a recip-
rocal action on a subsequent turn.
Like auctions, trading and negotiation bring to the table a degree of
competitive interpersonal interaction. They also allow all players to be actively
involved in the game when it is not their own turn to play, reducing the time
spent waiting for other players.35 Finally, by allowing players themselves to
determine the terms of a particular trade, negotiation acts as a game-balancing
feature inasmuch as players who are perceived to be ahead can be constrained
by the nature of the trades imposed by other players.36
Set Collection
Following Järvinen’s schema, set collection more accurately describes a
goal rather than a mechanic, referring as it does to the objective of collecting
related game resources in groups determined by the rules. Still, within the
gaming community it is commonly referred to as a mechanic, perhaps since
its implementation may be many steps removed from the overall goals of the
game. Of games that utilize set collection as a core mechanic/goal, examples
such as Coloretto and Bohnanza focus almost entirely upon the acquisition of
sets that generate points or in-game currency. As with other mechanics, how-
ever, set collection typically forms only one part of a more complex design.
Of the games that feature set collection as one of the central mechanics,
Knizia’s Ra blends the mechanism with auctions, Brunnhofer and Tummel-
hofer’s Stone Age (2008) with worker placement, and Dirk Henn’s Alhambra
(2003) with tile placement. In each of these games the accumulation of specific
sets constitutes the principal criterion for scoring.
5. The Eurogame Genre 93
Figure 5.6: Player aids showing set collection requirements in Die Siedler von
Catan (left) and Roads and Boats (right) (courtesy Catan GmbH and Splotter).
Area Control
Also described as area majority, area influence and majority control, area
control refers to gaining control of a specific game element through the allo-
cation of resources to that element. The entity to be controlled, the resources
to be allocated and the method of allocation vary from game to game. As
with set collection, area control might more accurately be considered a sub-
goal. Designer Shannon Appelcline identifies three types of majority control
game based upon the element to be controlled: share-based, area-based and
tile-based (2005b). Arguably the latter two of these can be considered varia-
94 EUROGAMES
Figure 5.7: Area control in El Grande (image by Simon Holding, courtesy Hans
im Glück).
tions of the same form, as tile-based refers to the fact that the areas to be con-
trolled are evolving through game play. In cases where control is established
through the allocation of resources over time, the area majority can be con-
sidered an evolution of the auction mechanism.
Share-based majority control games describe those in which control of
game elements is determined by the allocation of funds to accumulate shares
in a given game entity. This model has long been popular in Anglo-American
game designs, most obviously in the 18XX series of games, and eurogames too
have employed share-based majority in rail-themed games.39 However, while
it has occasionally been implemented in eurogames, the mechanic is not
strongly associated with the genre.40
Within eurogames, straightforward area-based control games are far more
common than the share-based model. Although examples are seen in earlier
designs,41 Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich’s El Grande is typically iden-
tified as the first successful game to utilize the area-based majority mechanic.
In El Grande, players seek to gain control of areas of the board through the
placement of pieces representing caballeros in medieval Spain. The options
for placing these pieces are governed by an auction phase that precedes placement,
with players able to score during specific rounds through the course of play.
Undoubtedly the most successful game to utilize area-based majority is
5. The Eurogame Genre 95
Weaving Mechanics
In describing these six mechanics that are frequently used in eurogames,
I have not sought to make definitive statements but to suggest some common
design elements that typify the genre. Although particular games are used to
highlight a specific mechanic, in the majority of cases they employ combina-
tions of multiple mechanics in their designs. As noted, mechanics such as tile
placement and set collection are hardly original. However, it is the use of
these mechanics in combination and the variety of ways in which they are
implemented that leads writers to point to the innovative nature of eurogames.
As designer Larry Levy notes:
The genius of the Euro designers is their ability to add subsystems to the basic
mechanics-heavy base of their games. This gives them added depth and color,
5. The Eurogame Genre 97
Figure 5.9: Simplified diagram of mechanics and sub-goals in Die Siedler von
Catan.
98 EUROGAMES
Figure 5.10: Die Siedler von Catan board during play (image by Simon Hold-
ing, courtesy Catan GmbH).
Goals in Eurogames
A game’s goal is a central feature of its formal structure. When players come
together to play a game, the goal is at the centre of the magic circle, the pole
that holds aloft the circular tent of the game while the players are inside the
structure, at play with one another. The goal sustains their interest, their
engagement and their desire.— Salen and Zimmerman, 2004, p. 258
If there is one element that is the most useful in both understanding and
playing a game, it is the goal. The goal, as it is prescribed by the ruleset, pro-
vides the sense of challenge that drives the movement of the game forward.
As a motivating force, it constitutes the principal intrinsic reason to engage
with the mechanics of the game. Whether players achieve this over-arching
goal or not results in the quantifiable outcome that separates casual play from
a structured game.50
Typically when discussing the goal of a given game it is the endgame
goal that is being considered. While the over-arching goal of all competitive
games is, ostensibly, to achieve the winning condition through employment
of the game mechanics, during the course of the game many sub-goals are
established, either by the rules (implicitly or explicitly) or internally by players
themselves. As an example, while the over-arching goal of a chess game is to
capture the king (or render it immovable), a player may adopt numerous sub-
goals on their way to this (e.g., capture the opponent’s queen, protect their
100 EUROGAMES
own king, etc.). Throughout the course of play, players are given the oppor-
tunity to work towards the game goals through the application of the various
game mechanics. Thus the game goals shape the way players experience the
game inasmuch as they emphasize a particular use of those mechanics. Build-
ing on the work of Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen (2005), Järvinen
describes 32 goal categories that are commonly encountered in games. Apply-
ing these categories to this sample of eurogames demonstrates the ubiquity
of accumulation as a quantifying endgame goal within the genre.
As is clear from figure 6.11, the over-arching goal of a large proportion
of eurogames is the accumulation of a particular game element, typically vic-
tory points and/or game currency. Notably, this accumulation is not quantified
in the sense that the attainment of a specific amount grants the player vic-
tory — in Järvinen’s terms this would be considered a race goal — but by a
comparative measure at the game’s conclusion. Eurogames commonly feature
combinations of sub-goals that together contribute towards an accumulation
of a particular game element, commonly abstracted to a points system. Indeed,
the ubiquity of this design approach within the genre is reflected in the com-
monly used term “kramerleiste” to describe a scoring track that often encircles
the board.51 Thus this distinction marks the outcomes of most eurogames as
being measured by comparative performance rather than qualified accom-
plishment.
To say that accumulation, rather than accomplishment, is the typical
overarching goal for a eurogame is to overlook the sub-goals of the game. As
Björk and Holopainen note, goals in games constitute a hierarchy, with the
highest order goal supported by a variety of sub-goals that are either explicitly
identified within the game rules or are implicit in the strategic possibilities
lation, emphasize competition rather than conflict. That is to say that player
sub-goals are typically not in direct conflict with each other. This distinction
has important ramifications for the nature of the game as the players experience
it and is another significant characteristic that typifies the eurogame genre.
another player (though they may at a later stage attempt to connect two regions
and share control with another player).
In this case the principal sub-goal of the game is the ownership and
expansion of regions to increase the eventual comparative score that is the
overarching goal of the game. As play of the game unfolds, the emergent sub-
goals for each individual player become increasingly differentiated from those
of their opponents. It is from these asymmetrical sub-goals that the tactics
and strategies of the game emerge. A player may adopt a longer-term strategy
that focuses on joining regions such that both are awarded the associated
points; however, there is no opportunity to directly reduce the number of
points scored by another player. Although player sub-goals can potentially
come into conflict with those of other players — indeed, Carcassonne can be
played in an extremely cutthroat manner by limiting an opponent’s scoring
opportunities — they are not inherently bound to the zero-sum model of direct
conflict. It is common in games with more than two participants for players
to work together to expand regions in order to share the associated points.
Interestingly, while this type of emergent non-conflicting goal asymmetry
is one of the hallmarks of eurogame design, it is also associated with one of
the principal criticisms of the genre. In extreme examples, such as Die Fürsten
von Florenz and Goa (Dorn, 2004), the mechanics that do allow interaction
with other players52 comprise such a small part of the game when compared
104 EUROGAMES
with the core system of individual optimization that many in the hobby gam-
ing community have suggested these games could be described as a multiplayer
form of solitaire.
While these examples are somewhat extreme, the combination of over-
arching goals of comparative performance and mechanics of indirect influence
is one that is seen in the majority of eurogames to some degree. Clearly it is
important to recognize that these observations are by necessity somewhat gen-
eralized, but together they serve to establish an overall sensibility of creative
endeavor rather than destructive confrontation. Not surprisingly, this sensi-
bility is typically carried through into the theme of most eurogames.
Theme in Eurogames
In eurogames, the mechanics are the heart of the game; the theme is icing to
help market the game.— Berlinger, 2009b
There exists an ongoing debate within the board gaming hobby over the
relative importance of theme and mechanic. The debate mirrors a theoretical
clash that emerged within the academic field of game studies in the early 21st
century. The so-called narratology/ludology debate initially emerged from
two differing perspectives on how digital games — and games more gener-
ally — should be studied. To summarize this extensive and far-reaching dis-
cussion, the narratological53 position proposed that games might be studied
as a form of narrative, focusing on the theme and stories produced during
play. Conversely, the ludologist claim was a formalist one, which argued that
games needed to be analyzed on their own terms — that is, through the abstract
systems they encompass.54 Dismissing the study of games through the lens of
literary theory, so-called “radical” ludologist Markku Eskelinen argues:
Stories are just uninteresting ornaments or gift-wrappings to games, and lay-
ing any emphasis on studying these kinds of marketing tools is just a waste of
time and energy [2001].55
As Eskelinen suggests, theme and story are clearly not constitutive elements
of a game, as evidenced by sports and the myriad of abstract table games that
remain playable and enjoyable despite the omission of an explicit theme.
However, as Järvinen argues, the ornamental nature of game themes do have
consequences for player experience (2009, p. 21).56 Describing the theme as
a “metaphor for the ruleset,” he proposes that in creating such a metaphor,
an extra level of meaning is created “for everything that happens in the game”
(p. 74). Furthermore, the existence of this metaphor has implications for the
5. The Eurogame Genre 105
player themselves since they are positioned as actors within the metaphor,
typically charged with a thematic goal which overlays the functional one:
In practice, thematization consists of a set of communicative techniques with
which the ruleset and the elements it governs is framed towards the meanings
... that are pursued [p. 76].
In the earlier discussion of goals, I noted that the functional goal of many
eurogames is the accumulation of game elements, typically currency or points.
The accumulation of these in-game elements is a measurement of the com-
parative success or failure of the player in performing the game mechanics in
the context of the game system. The application of theme to these mechanics
and goals, while not strictly necessary, serves not only to make the game more
readily understandable, but also provides the player with a role around which
their actions within the game can be contextualized. In short, it imbues in
the player a sense of meaning for all actions taken in the game and, more
importantly, frames those actions in terms of another system. Consequently,
the referent system around which the theme is based, and the thematic goals
pursued by the players, are important elements of any particular game design.
Theme, when present in board games, is relayed through a number of
game elements, primarily the contextual backstory offered on the box and
rules, and the graphic design of packaging and components.57 In addition to
graphic presentation, the game box will usually introduce the player to the
backstory of the game through a description of the theme and the player’s
role and goals. For example, from the English translation of the game Die
Händler von Genua:
Genoa, in the middle of the 16th century, is the largest trading city in the
Mediterranean. The many trading houses compete to be the richest and most
profitable. But to be successful, they must sometimes cooperate.
The players take the roles of traders in Genoa. They fulfill orders, deliver
messages, and take ownership of important buildings in the city. Of course,
this is not possible without the help of the other traders. And that can cost
money ... and other valuable goods! [Dorn, 2001b].
In terms of the actual gameplay, Die Händler von Genua reflects the
theming of the game relatively closely. Players travel around a board that bears
a stylized top-down representation of the city of Genoa,58 delivering goods
and messages to specific buildings, which they may also purchase. Throughout
the game a series of negotiation rules allow players to influence the actions of
other players by bribing them to visit specific locations. In this sense the
theme serves to support the mechanical aspects of the game, and it is difficult
to imagine one without the other.
Although the example of Die Händler von Genua is useful in describing
106 EUROGAMES
Figure 5.14: Delivering goods and messages in Die Händler von Genua (image
by Simon Holding, courtesy Alea and Rüdiger Dorn).
the way that theme serves to complement game mechanics and goals, the close
marriage described here is somewhat atypical for a eurogame. The abstraction
of accumulation as an overarching goal appears to free designers from such
close adherence to theme — to the degree that many have classified eurogames
as being largely abstract games with themes that are applied late in the design
process (Aleknevicus, 2004; Faidutti, 2005b; Pulsipher, 2006). Indeed, Greg
Aleknevicus goes so far as to describe the loose application of themes in
eurogames as fraudulent59:
The wholesale grafting of a theme onto a set of mechanics is dishonest if those
mechanics have no real world connection to that theme. Can a game really be
about exploring the Amazon if it can easily be re-themed to the terror of the
French Revolution? Is it realistic to simply add floors to an existing skyscraper?
Did ancient explorers really decide the orientation of the islands they discov-
ered? [2004].
Often referred to as an exemplar of this approach is mathematician
turned designer Reiner Knizia, whose games commonly appear as abstract
exercises with only a circumstantial relationship to the theme proposed by the
artwork and background. One of many examples to be found in Knizia’s
ludography is that of Ra. The box cover of the English translation describes
the game and the players’ roles:
5. The Eurogame Genre 107
The game spans 1500 years of Egyptian history. Seek to expand your power
and fame by influencing Pharoahs, building monuments, farming on the Nile,
paying homage to the gods and advancing the technology and culture of the
people [Knizia, 2005].
Despite the suggestion of a sweeping historical saga, Ra is a relatively straight-
forward game of bidding and set collection, with the various achievements
described in the backstory referring to sets of tiles that players seek to collect
through a series of auctions. Evidence of this somewhat tangential relationship
between theme and mechanics is found in the game Razzia! (2004a), another
Knizia game published five years after Ra. In Razzia! players are cast as the
heads of mafia families who seek to accumulate wealth before the arrival of
police, who terminate the game round. Notwithstanding these seemingly
incompatible themes, Ra and Razzia are, with some small changes, essentially
the same game in terms of mechanics.60 A similarly loose relationship between
game mechanics and theme in eurogames can be seen in many games that
have been re-issued with new themes.61
Given the broad range of mechanics in eurogames, one might expect
that this variety would be reflected in the range of themes that are applied to
them. For the purposes of identifying the dominant themes in eurogames, I
have broken the analysis of theme down into two elements. Firstly, there is
the broader thematic context through which the ruleset is framed, which I
term the thematic model. Secondly, there is the motivation implied by this
theme, the implicit role that draws the player into the world of the game and
provides their actions with a context. This I term the thematic goal. In other
words, the thematic model is the world into which the player is transported,
while the thematic goal provides the fictional motivation to pursue the goals
of the game. In concert, these elements reveal much about the nature of the
eurogame genre.
Figure 5.15 provides a diagram of the various thematic models that can
be observed in the games under analysis here. For the purposes of this analysis,
these models were largely derived from the contextual backstory and graphic
design of the game. If we are to consider theme, at least partly, as a constituent
element of the eurogame genre, an immediate observation that can be made
from this sampling is the degree to which history provides a thematic backdrop
for many titles.62 Setting aside those games that are not themed in any way,
historical themes constitute 65 percent of all remaining games. In comparison
with Anglo-American forms of hobby game, while fantasy themes are present
in a significant number of titles,63 science fiction is notably under-
represented.64 Still, despite the dominance of historical titles, the thematic
frames presented here constitute an eclectic mix.
Figure 5.16 indicates the thematic goals as they are presented to the player
through the contextual backstory and the thematic aim as proposed by the
rules. This is not information taken from the goals as they are presented within
the game rules themselves, but by the description of play typically offered on
the game’s box and/or as an introduction to the ruleset. Immediately apparent
from this data is the number of titles that do not explicitly describe a goal in
the context of the game’s thematic model. Once again setting aside those
games that are entirely abstract, a number of the games analyzed are overlaid
with a theme that has no coherent relationship with the game’s mechanics,
and thus no thematic goal is presented. In these cases the theme does simply
serve as “gift wrapping,” and the game system itself bears a largely arbitrary
relationship to the suggested theme. In examples such as Hol’s der Geier, 6
Nimmt! and Coloretto, animals appear on the packaging and cards, but the
application of theme essentially ends there.65 As Bruno Faidutti has noted,
these games tend to lie at the simpler end of the design spectrum:
Some games, mostly those based on a single and simple mechanism, can easily
have their setting changed, because it’s just a setting and not a real theme, and
they don’t need it to work.... When games are more complex, and involve
many game systems, the theme becomes much more than a background set-
ting. It becomes what gives a meaning to the game’s action, what makes the
game coherent — and this is true not only for the games that were designed
starting from the theme [2005a].
Following Faidutti’s assertion, it is not surprising to find that theme is
consistently present in the more complex games analyzed. Among those games
that do offer a thematic goal, the emphasis upon individual achievement that
was identified in the functional goal rules is reinforced. Thematic goals that
emphasize goals-of-self, such as building, development and the accumulation
of wealth, are commonplace. Furthermore, as with the functional goals and
the mechanics underlying them, there is a distinct paucity of goals that suggest
direct conflict.66 While a theme is often only loosely woven into the overall
fabric of the typical eurogame, in the vast majority of cases the emphasis upon
comparative achievement is carried through from the mechanics to the the-
matic goals. As varied and eclectic as their themes are, the central essence of
games that charge players with goals-of-self and resolve through comparative
performance remains.
Although theme might be considered arbitrary in analyzing the behavior
of a game system, it is an important element in terms of both marketing and
player experience. For a publisher, theme is an important factor in attracting
the target audience to purchase a particular title, while for players it can func-
tion to draw them into the fictional world of the game and thus enhance the
player’s experience. As with mechanics, the most notable observation con-
cerning the presence of theme in eurogames is the degree to which particular
110 EUROGAMES
subject matter is not present. Direct conflict particularly is rarely called upon
to motivate players as a thematic goal. Instead, the emphasis is typically upon
individual achievement, with thematic goals such as building, development
and the accumulation of wealth being prevalent. While eurogames commonly
employ history as a thematic backdrop, they tend to focus on political and
economic aspects of the period they draw upon, rather than the ideological
and political clashes. It is also notable that eurogames tend not to draw on
the fictional settings of science fiction and fantasy as commonly as Anglo-
American hobby games do.
The emphasis on historical and economic themes is a significant trait of
eurogames, as it affects their positioning in the marketplace. Unlike Anglo-
American games that often focus on niche interests (historical conflict, science
fiction, etc.), eurogame themes are arguably more accessible to a broader mar-
ket. While a sustained interest in fictional genres, such as science fiction and
fantasy, is perhaps a requirement for enjoying a game tightly themed around
these settings, the loose application of generic subject matter, such as history,
business and the natural world, requires little player investment in the thematic
background in order to engage with the game. As discussed above, this
approach to theme is one of the key criticisms of the genre, though given the
roots of eurogames in family gaming, this emphasis on accessible themes is
not surprising.
Information in Eurogames
The vast majority of eurogames are sequential in nature, meaning that
players make decisions in turn, based upon information they receive from the
actions of other players and the current game state as it is represented by the
environment and components.67 As such, from the perspective of each indi-
vidual player, new information is added to the game system on each turn, an
iterative pattern that simulation designer Richard Duke describes as “pulses”
(1974, p. 40). In the context of Järvinen’s framework, these pulses establish
an evolving relationship between game information and other game elements
that constitutes the “fuel of meaning” distributed between the self, others and
the game system (2009, p. 71).
In discussing the nature of games, writers commonly refer to the dis-
tinction between perfect and imperfect information, terms borrowed from
mathematical game theory. Games of perfect information are those in which
the player not only has access to all information regarding the game state, but
also all the previous and potential actions taken by other players, along with
the related consequences.68 Examples of games of perfect information include
5. The Eurogame Genre 111
traditional abstracts such as Chess and Go. Within the genre of eurogames,
perfect information games are rare, although examples do exist.69 Most
eurogames are games of imperfect information, although the type of infor-
mation and the way it is hidden varies a great deal.
In games where information is hidden by the game system, a random
element is introduced to increase variety while simultaneously rendering the
game less susceptible to any conclusive analysis. A deck of hidden cards or
tiles is a common example. In Carcassonne players draw from a stack of face
down tiles which are placed to form the environment of the game; while in
Puerto Rico the plantation tiles that are available for purchase each turn are
initially randomized and hidden, only being revealed at the beginning of each
turn. In Agricola a series of actions are progressively made available to players
from round to round. Although the nature of these actions is known, the
exact order in which they will be made available is not, thus adding unpre-
dictability to an otherwise relatively procedural game.
When individual players hold specific information, a game is far less sus-
ceptible to logical analysis, since a player is not aware of every possibility and
consequence of other players’ actions. Game elements that are distributed to
individual players can then shape the strategic and tactical possibilities avail-
able to them as they progress through the game. Many eurogames employ a
privately held hand of resource cards or tiles,70 while others employ such hid-
den elements as currency,71 points72 and bonus cards.73 In some cases player
sub-goals are also held privately.74 As Appelcline notes, the nature of privately
held information is such that it tends to add a level of meta-communicative
interpretation to the gameplay, as players may attempt to deduce or infer cer-
tain information through careful observation of another player’s behavior
and/or actions within the game (2003). Significantly, when particular infor-
mation is held by the game system it introduces purely random elements to
the game, and luck enters the system.
Once again, the reasons for this differing approach lie in the simulative
roots of Anglo-American hobby gaming. The nature of armed conflict, at
least on a strategic or operational level, is such that the outcome of individual
actions cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. In order to accurately
simulate a particular battle or operation, a wargame must account for this
lack of unpredictability. Of course, this is not to suggest that the outcome of
a wargame is randomly determined, since players are at least notionally aware
of the statistical probabilities underlying a particular decision. However, the
short-term outcome of any given decision cannot be completely certain. As
hobby gaming evolved and role-playing games appeared, this model of com-
bat — a decision followed by a randomly determined outcome — became the
dominant model.77
The designers of early eurogames, on the other hand, were not design-
ing simulations, they were designing games for the family market. Conse-
quently, random factors are employed to heighten variability and to embellish
the decision-making process. As long as these random factors are balanced,
their overall effect can ideally be mitigated through skilful play. Costikyan
uses the example of Torres to highlight how the random drawing of cards
adds color to decision-making without unduly influencing the eventual out-
come:
The action cards in Torres allow players to do different things but, at least a
priori, none of the actions they permit is obviously better or worse than the
others. In addition, to draw a new action card, a player must forgo taking
some other action in the game, so the question of whether or not to draw a
card becomes a strategic concern. Chance is not entirely eliminated through
this scheme, however; in a particular strategic situation, drawing a new action
card might provide you with an ability that is precisely what you need at this
moment, or something that is of no immediate benefit — and so luck contin-
ues to play a role [2009].
Luck is present in most games, and those being discussed here are no
exception. In eurogames, where particular emphasis is placed upon the
mechanics of choosing, the ability to review the result of a random process
before making a decision ensures that players have a sense of control over
their own progression within the game. Importantly, it is not necessarily the
case that this design element has any direct correlation with the role that skill
plays in a particular game,78 but, as Salen and Zimmerman point out, player
perception of random elements is defined not so much by the mathematics
of probability that underlie them, but by the way these events are implemented
(2004, p. 175). In the case of eurogames, the perception of control brought
about by shifting the chronology and structure of random elements can be
seen as a defining trait of the genre.
114 EUROGAMES
game moves forward, a player’s ability to move goods increases, with tension
at the endgame emerging from the large scoring opportunities afforded by
larger shipments. One of the perceived issues with this type of game system
is the tendency for those who have developed the more efficient engine to pull
further and further ahead from the other players, a problem referred to as
having a “runaway leader.” To combat this, a number of games deliberately
employ systems that benefit the player in the losing position (or hinder the
leader) in order to maintain tension. For example, in Funkenschlag (Second
Edition) (Friese, 2004) the player who has the lowest number of points at the
beginning of each round is granted the first opportunity to purchase resources
and build connections, an advantage in terms of resource pricing and route
availability. Similarly, in Teuber’s Die Sternenfahrer von Catan (1999), players
below a certain point threshold receive a bonus resource that can be used
towards construction in the game.82
The variety and frequency of these design elements suggest that the issue
of keeping all players actively involved with the game throughout the course
of play is one that has caught the attention of eurogame designers. Through
the implementation of a wide range of design techniques, the overall experi-
ence is commonly that the outcome of a particular game cannot be predicted
until quite close to the game end. This notion, that players should always be
actively engaged with the game, is carried through to another trait of the
genre — that of constrained playing times.
I have highlighted here a series of traits and qualities that have become
identified with the eurogame genre. As I mentioned in the opening paragraphs,
however, this analysis is littered with the types of generalizations that make
genre identification so subjective. For all of the qualities cited in this chapter,
5. The Eurogame Genre 117
themes drawn from popular media licenses. Consequently, theme can be seen
to play a significant role in the decision to play one particular game over
another. Mark Bordenet (2000, pp. 38–39) identifies the strong attraction of
the fantasy theme in Magic: The Gathering and the importance of thematic
familiarity in players choosing to play the Star Wars CCG (Darcy et al., 1995).
While designers of eurogames develop mechanical systems, perhaps with
specific themes in mind, it is often the publishers of these games who decide
upon the eventual themes.87 Games are brought to market within a particular
cultural context in which both the theme and mechanics may play a role in
the success of a given title. As gaming writer Andrew Hardin points out, most
hobby gamers consider both the theme and the quality of the underlying
mechanics important (2001). The majority of eurogames do have a theme,
even if it is not uppermost in the minds of designers. So, despite the apparent
prioritization of mechanics over theme in these designs, the latter cannot be
dismissed as merely window dressing, especially considering the close rela-
tionship between thematic and mechanical goals identified here.
Both the thematic and mechanical goals of the typical eurogame are
imbued with the sensibilities of construction, development and accumulation,
a sharp contrast to the conflict-driven simulations that form the basis of Anglo-
American hobby gaming. This emphasis on individual accomplishment
through collaborative competition rather than achievement through direct
conflict and elimination arguably implies a more sociably oriented design phi-
losophy. The combination of simple rulesets, predictable playing times and
loosely applied generic themes of development that typify eurogames are evi-
dence of a game form with a particular focus on accessibility. Still, at the time
of this writing, eurogames remain a niche genre familiar for the most part
only to a dedicated hobbyist audience. It is to this audience, the players, that
I turn my attention in the next chapter.
6
Hobby Gamers
120
6. Hobby Gamers 121
Boardgamegeek
The rapid growth of the Internet over the last two decades has resulted
in the emergence of virtual “communities of interest” centered on particular
topics and a shared enthusiasm for specific cultural products and/or activities
(Armstrong and Hagel, 1996). The result is that such communities offer an
ideal space for the exploration of both the nature of specific communities and
the subject of their interest. Boardgamegeek, a website devoted to the cata-
loguing and discussion of board and table games, is such a community of
interest whose members can be seen as broadly representative of players with
a strong interest in hobby board games, particularly modern eurogames. The
enthusiasm for this particular form is reflected in the active discussion of not
only the games themselves, but on many elements of the culture surrounding
the hobby and the nature of play as it is experienced by gamers.
Launched in 2000 by American gamers Scott Alden and Derk Solko,
boardgamegeek has become a nexus for board game hobbyists on the Internet.
As of mid–2011 the site boasts 400,000 members and a database containing
over 50,000 individual games. Boardgamegeek is among the top 7,000 most
frequently visited websites on the Internet according to Alexa.com
(“boardgamegeek.com,” 2010).1 Gaming hobbyists use the site to discuss all
aspects of games and gaming culture. Features of the site include individual
listings for games, game rankings, discussion boards, collection management
tools, facilities for storing game-related files, a messaging service and trading
functionality. In 2010 the site was awarded the Inno-Spatz for “outstanding
achievements in the world of games” at the game designer’s convention in
Goettingen (Drude, 2010). Founded upon a shared interest in the emerging
eurogame genre and a desire to provide a platform for sharing information
and discussion (Alden and Solko, 2004b; Vasel, 2005e), boardgamegeek is
exemplary of the way in which communities of interest have found new life
on the Internet, becoming what cultural scholar Henry Jenkins describes as
“expansive self-organizing groups focused around the collective production,
debate, and circulation of meanings, interpretations, and fantasies in response
to various artefacts of contemporary popular culture” (2002b, p. 159).
Boardgamegeek Demographics
In 2007 I undertook an extensive online survey designed to draw out
basic demographic information about boardgamegeek members, along with
more qualitative information about the nature of their play experiences. In
order to situate the responses that are discussed in this book, I here review
122 EUROGAMES
the basic demographic data that was collected through this survey. This data
provides demographic information on the boardgamegeek community, based
on an average response rate for each question of approximately 650. As these
respondents are a self-selecting group, they can be considered representative
of frequent visitors and contributors to the site. Given the central role of
boardgamegeek within the broader hobby community, these respondents con-
stitute a sample with a particularly strong interest in board games.
Education
Respondents were questioned as to the highest level of education they
had achieved. 68 percent of respondents indicated that they had achieved an
undergraduate degree or higher, with slightly more than 10 percent holding
a doctoral degree.
Nationality
Although boardgamegeek is based in the United States and the majority of
users are North American (68 percent), community members are drawn from
throughout the world, with a significant number from Europe (25 percent).
Profession/Income
Member professions were not captured in this survey; however, user
LankyEngineer conducted an informal poll in 2008 through the site’s forum
pages that addressed this question specifically (2008b).3 38 percent of users
work in IT or engineering related fields. Other notably represented fields of
employment are education (9 percent) and business management (6 percent).
Average income of site members is approximately U.S. $50,000 per year, 10
percent higher than the median in the United States at the time of the survey
(“U.S. Census Bureau,” 2006).
6. Hobby Gamers 123
suggesting that “like the participants in many leisure ‘scenes,’ most fantasy
gamers are young” (1983, pp. 39–41).6 Fine attributes this younger demo-
graphic, most of whom he notes are students, to the higher proportion of
leisure time that is available to younger adults:
Adolescents and young adults have free time, few social responsibilities, and
are relatively open to fantasy. Players cite marriages, full-time jobs, and gradu-
ate school as reasons for disengaging from the hobby, indicating that social
responsibilities affect the free time necessary for participating in these games
[p. 40].
Bordenet identifies a similar age group in his 2000 study of collectible
card game players.7 However, although demographic data concerning hobby
gamers is relatively sparse, or at least closely guarded by the industry, a 2000
survey by Wizards of the Coast found that the age of gamers was rising steadily,
with over 50 percent of gamers over the age of nineteen (Dancey, 2000).8
Furthermore, while the survey indicates that those players who take up gaming
during high school continue the pastime, there is also the suggestion that “the
existing group of players is aging and not being refreshed by younger players
at the same rate as in previous years.” My responses suggest that boardgamegeek
members constitute a significantly older demographic than did those who
responded to Fine’s and Bordenet’s surveys. While there is no firm evidence
that the two groups are linked, the notion that gamers constitute an aging
demographic generally is borne out by research into video games that has seen
the average age of players rising over the last two decades (“2008 Sales,” 2008;
Juul, 2010). A similar shift has been observed in comic book readership,
another staple of geek culture (Deppey, 2004).9
It is interesting that Fine partially attributes the age demographics of
role-playing gamers to the high proportion of leisure time that is available to
younger adults. Jesper Juul, in appraising the shifting demographics of video
gamers and the rise in popularity of “casual games,” suggests that one expla-
nation is to be found in the changing life circumstances of gamers (2010, p.
10). The idea that game playing habits are, in part, shaped by the shifting
responsibilities of age is a key focus of his book on the topic. The notion that
time constraints and other age-related responsibilities play a part in shaping
the gaming habits of players is reflected in discussions on boardgamegeek, in
particular where players attest to having played other forms of hobby game
earlier in their lives. Board games generally, and eurogames specifically, are
often identified as fitting far more comfortably into players’ lives as they grow
older:
I know from my experience that shorter games have gotten me back into the
hobby. As a young adult (college and shortly post-college), I used to play a lot
of longer games- 1830, Axis and Allies, Civilization, Stellar Conquest, Junta,
6. Hobby Gamers 125
and others. With a few exceptions, like Acquire, that’s pretty much what was
available at the time if you wanted something better than what they sold at
Toys ‘R Us. I loved these games (and still do love 1830 and Civilization), but
once I had a demanding job, a wife, a home to take care of (home ownership
is much more work than an apartment), and a child, it really got to the point
where I could only play a 5+ hour game once or twice a year. The other guys
in my group were all in the same boat — we really wanted to play more, but
getting everyone together for a long game was just too hard with our schedules
[Hamburg, 2005].
The comparatively small time investment required by modern European board
games when compared with earlier Anglo-American designs and other forms
of hobby game can be attributed to the relative simplicity of rules and shorter
playing times. The result are games that are far easier to fit into a player’s life.
I think you are going to find computer folks drawn to the hobby because of
the nature of the underlying system design. There is going to be a respect for
a well designed, elegant system in a game just like a well designed, elegant
computer process. Games are procedural in nature and exercise the same
thought processes as designing and writing code. In some senses, it’s just like
writing code, but you are using people and cardboard to execute the logic
[Beyer, 2005].
The comparison of games and computer programming as procedural processes
highlights an affinity between board gaming and other interests. Perhaps not
surprisingly, these interests tend towards the intellectual. After all, the name of
the website is boardgamegeek, a title with particular socio-cultural connotations.
Gamer Geeks
The basic demographics of boardgamegeek that are presented here —
highly educated males with an exaggerated interest in a particular form of
intellectual recreation — serve to highlight the appropriateness of the site’s
appellation, and its common abbreviation: the geek. Hobby games are a part
of a broader range of related hobbies and interests that together constitute
what might be loosely termed “geek culture.” In a general sense, the term
geek refers to an individual who is “fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure
areas of knowledge and imagination” (Konzack, 2006). However, as Lars Kon-
zack observes, the objects of this fascination tend towards those with an
emphasis on individual fulfillment through the construction of fictional
worlds. Science fiction, fantasy, games (both digital and non-digital), comic
books and the broader culture of computing fall under this umbrella.
Although use of the term geek has somewhat pejorative origins (Smith,
1995, p. 12), as William Svitavsky notes, the rise of information technology
and the attendant cultural shifts have seen the label “subverted ... into proud
self-identification” (2001, p. 101). Konzack refers to the introspective pursuit
of consistent alternative realities as “the third counter-culture” (2006). Citing
longer periods of education, increased leisure time and the nature of Internet
communities in facilitating the sharing of specialized knowledge, Konzack
highlights the affinity between geeks and gaming culture generally:
From classic role-playing games, LARP, and strategic board games to trading
card games and highly developed videogames, the geek culture is mixing fun
with substance, rapidly changing how culture and aesthetics are perceived in
our culture [2006].
Clearly the correlation between gaming and geek culture is apparent in
the naming of boardgamegeek. Moreover, among members there is evidence
6. Hobby Gamers 127
siderable zeal, they rarely threaten or offer disruptive alternatives to the dom-
inant ideologies of the society in which they are found. In the past, however,
fan communities have typically been marginalized due to their apparent
strangeness. Typically this has not been a result of the level of devotion (which
is surely shared by enthusiasts of more mainstream activities such as sports),
but by the perceived lack of “worthiness” of the specific subject ( Jensen, 1992).
Reflecting this, gaming writer Rick Heli tellingly compares board gaming cul-
ture in the U.S. with science fiction fandom:
These games have mostly been a counterculture thing here. Those who are
thoughtful, precise and analytical have often been ignored in this country,
which gave rise to science fiction, the literature of the smarter who long to
have their due — see A.E. van Vogt’s Slan which features big brain aliens
secretly masquerading as ordinary humans.... Games have had the very same
sort of appeal in many cases [Heli in Eggert, 2005].12
As Holzgrafe indicates here, hobby gaming not only involves the dedi-
cated play of games but also the acquisition of specialized knowledge that can
then be applied to discussion and critique of the form. This specialized knowl-
edge, coupled with the relatively small size of the hobby gaming industry,
tends to lead to a blurring of the line between consumer and producer, par-
ticularly when hobbyists circulate knowledge and texts back into the com-
munity. As dedicated gamers who actively engage with the hobby and each
other in ways that surpass casual interest, hobbyists are comparable to many
6. Hobby Gamers 129
other fan communities in that they constitute a unique segment of the audi-
ence whose enthusiasm marks them as notable yet atypical.
The board gaming hobby is best described as a leisure subculture. I use
this term, borrowed from Gary Fine’s work on role-playing gamers (1983, p.
237), for two reasons. Firstly, the term neatly sidesteps the political conno-
tations that are so often associated with more counter-cultural forms of sub-
culture. In the case of hobbyists, there is no shared political dimension that
accompanies engagement with the hobby. Hobby gamers are individuals who,
attracted to a particular leisure pursuit, seek each other out and form loose
aggregations around a shared interest. As cultural studies scholar Lawrence
Grossberg observes:
The fact that a group of people share a taste for some texts does not in fact
guarantee that their common taste describes a common relationship. Taste
merely describes people’s different abilities to find pleasure in a particular
body of texts rather than others [1992, p. 42].
The second reason for using this term is to highlight the fact that since
the focus of the culture is a leisure pursuit, any attachments to other, more
politicized groupings are unlikely to be eclipsed by participation in the hobby.
Leisure subcultures rarely hold sway over individuals in the same way as do
more counter-cultural examples, such as youth subcultures (Fine, 1983, p.
237).
Having distanced game hobbyists from more politicized and cohesive
notions of subculture, it is important to note that leisure activities are not
chosen on an ad hoc basis. Typically generalized preferences exist in which
individuals “develop broader systems of leisure behavior consisting of a num-
ber of interdependent elements” (Roberts, 1978, p. 37). As I noted above, one
of the “broader systems” that contributes to an interest in hobby gaming is
that of geek culture. The embrace of particular board games as a legitimate
and laudable cultural product is, as Konzack argues, typical of this:
The geek (or at least the well-educated geek) marvels not just at anything, but
seeks the quality in these cultural products. Not all games are equally good.
The same goes for movies, comics, literature, etc. In that sense it’s actually
anti-post-modern, because they are not saying “anything goes.” On the con-
trary, they are saying that these aesthetic contributions need to be taken seri-
ously, demanding meticulous criticism and genuine research [2006].
Evidence of this type of “meticulous criticism” is abundant on
boardgamegeek. Reviews and comparisons of games, debates over the merits
of particular designers, discussions of the nuances of mechanics and the relative
importance of theme — these are among the core activities that define the con-
tent of the website. As a community of interest, boardgamegeek provides a
130 EUROGAMES
forum for hobbyists to thoroughly analyze every facet of board game design,
production and play, an environment ideally suited to the geek tendency to
focus tightly on one specific topic.14
Although not necessarily politicized, like many subcultures, gaming posi-
tions itself against a more conventional counterpart — in this case the main-
stream board game market. The majority of respondents indicate that they
rarely, if ever, play mainstream games (59 percent), while a further 35 percent
play only occasionally.15 This dismissal of mass-market board games is readily
identifiable in discussions on the website, with the ubiquitous Monopoly often
held up as a prime example of everything that gamers perceive is “wrong”
with mainstream games:
It’s dismissed for several things which combine to a poor game design in
today’s terms — runaway leader, large luck which “scales up” the more the
trading is done (and trading is very close to the only meaningful decision),
player elimination, and a long play time for the amount of decisions made
[Van Zandt, 2009].
The distribution of properties is the most important determinate of who will
win, and they are distributed randomly by rolling dice and moving onto
them. A game in which the most important way to win is rolling the right
number on a set of dice can never be terribly interesting [Spencer, 2008].
As suggested here, the principal reason cited for the dismissal of main-
stream board games is that they rarely offer players meaningful decisions
through which they might affect the outcome of the game. This esoteric crit-
icism reflects the way in which hobbyists think critically about games as vehi-
cles for entertainment. While for the non-gamer a board game might be seen
as a way to pass a few idle hours without too much thought, for the hobbyist
games are often only valued to the degree they allow players to engage with
a system that produces meaningful decisions and outcomes. Through expe-
rience of a wide variety of games, players develop what might cynically be
termed an elitist stance against mainstream games, precisely because they do
not provide the kinds of pleasures that hobby gamers pursue in game expe-
riences. Given the breadth of gaming experience of the typical hobbyist, the
development of this perspective can be largely attributed to active and sus-
tained engagement. Although a popular perspective in sociology attributes
aesthetic taste to social origin16— certainly a factor in the broader development
of geek leisure preferences — it is important to acknowledge the way in which
enthusiasts operate as a “competing educational elite” ( Jenkins, 1992, p. 86),
recognizing the value and quality in particular cultural products. French soci-
ologist Antoine Hennion describes this reflexive relationship between the indi-
vidual and taste:
6. Hobby Gamers 131
Tastes are not given or determined, and their objects are not either; one has to
make them appear together, through repeated experiments, progressively
adjusted.... Through comparison, repetition and so on, things that are less
inert than they appear are made more present [2007, p. 101].
Of course, this is not to say that there are not other factors at work in
developing a preference for a particular form of game over another. The opin-
ions of friends and colleagues may have a significant impact on perceptions,
an effect that is only magnified within a community of interest such as
boardgamegeek. The various game awards also serve to shape preferences and
guide purchasing decisions. Additionally, as writer and reviewer Michael
Barnes suggests, the unique origins of eurogames may play a role in their cur-
rent popularity:
There’s this cache of perceived exoticism and esotericism that comes with
being into “German Games” that has created this mindset among the current
generation of gamers that someone “foreign” equals “superior” and there’s this
whole new set of aesthetics founded largely on that concept [Barnes, 2006].
All of these factors — social origin, the opinions of friends, the views of
peers in the community, and the accumulation of social capital — doubtless
contribute to a propensity for playing a particular kind of game. Still, the fact
remains that board game hobbyists tend to be passionate about their hobby,
and, in their devotion to the pastime, analyze, critique and discuss games
with a dedication that is comparable to fans of many other cultural products.
Of course, in order to develop this level of specialist knowledge, hobbyists
must play, and consequently buy, many games.
the most part board game hobbyists move between different games with a
particularly strong emphasis on new releases. Although lacking the focused
dedication that is often seen with “lifestyle” games, such as Chess or Go, this
diversification can, perhaps, offer a more general understanding of games:
In a mono-gaming culture (where you played the same game over and over
again), you’d become an expert on strategies for playing that game. In the
more diverse gaming environment, you start thinking about game design more
generally as you compare how different rules/mechanics shape the feel of dif-
ferent games. Individual games may be quicker, but you’re still developing a
cumulative knowledge of gaming which is a result of many hours of
play/study/experience/thought [Hemberger, 2005].
The trend towards diversification and accumulation is reflected in an informal
poll of active boardgamegeek members conducted in 2009, indicating that
approximately 57 percent purchase one or more games a month, with over
one-third purchasing two or more (Williams, 2008).17 In part, the drive
towards accumulation may be a result of there being far more games available
in the marketplace than was previously the case:
There are far too many good books to read them all in one lifetime. I think
the “problem” is that good games are now almost like good books. There was
a period of time where gamers had relatively little choice of what good games
to play. Now we’re spoiled for choice. That can lead to the tendency to jump
around [Witt, 2005].
The aging player demographic and the associated rise in income is also a rel-
evant factor. As gamer Ken Mixon notes, “nowadays, we’re all grown up, have
varying degrees of disposable income, and are able to succumb to our material
wants more easily” (2005).
For many players it is the desire to experience new games that drives
their acquisition of new titles, a focus that has come to be known as “the cult
of the new.” Often this may be a part of an ongoing quest for an optimal
assortment of games that represents particular mechanics or themes, can
accommodate a particular number of players, or, more generally, provide a
game for every social setting. There is also a sense that some players are pur-
suing an indefinable “ideal” game experience:
Ideally, I’d like to own just one game — and I’d like it to be a game that every-
body I know (including me) absolutely loves and can never get enough of and
will never tire of or outgrow. A game that brings back all the wondrous magic
of childhood and excitement of good game play for everyone involved, every
time. Anytime I buy a new game, it’s in hopes of it turning out to be that one
ultimate game [Carroll, 2008b].
Although it is possible to view this habitual acquisition of games as
merely an example of unnecessarily conspicuous consumption, another per-
6. Hobby Gamers 133
spective is that modern games are not suitable for repeated play. Arguably,
eurogames lack the strategic depth that is attributed to classical abstracts and
older, more complex hobby games. A common criticism is that new publica-
tions are often variations on previous titles, merely remixing and adapting
familiar mechanics. Consequently, when original designs do appear there is a
sense that the focus upon innovative mechanics in European designs does not
lend itself to repeated plays:
I think most new eurogames are disposable, something you expect to play
maybe 5 to 7 times, are priced to match, and that’s OK. Every so often you
get a great one you play again and again, but you expect the numbers of those
to be small. At some level, a chunk of the enjoyment of a game for me is just
in the experience of playing it, of seeing how it works — experiencing the
game as one might experience art or a movie — and that is obviously some-
thing that’s not going to be as impressive the second (or third or whatever)
time through.... They [German games] simply aren’t designed to be played
endlessly [Farrell, 2005].
In an early Sumo article, Charles Vasey questioned the reasons for accu-
mulating games and in doing so, challenged readers to examine how many of
their games had been played five or ten times (Dagger, 2006b). The resultant
“five and ten” lists served as an indicator of how few games were being played
repeatedly.18 Nevertheless, discussion of the value of games is common on
boardgamegeek, with users often drawing comparisons with other forms of
consumer goods and activities19:
With a board game what you’re really talking about is bang for your economic
buck. Even a $50+ board game compares favorably with the cost of an eve-
ning out, and it’s going to have a much longer lifespan of enjoyment than a
night at dinner and the movies — and a not unappreciable lifespan in compari-
son with video games [Jenkins, 2008].
The fact that hobby gamers have a tendency to purchase large numbers
of games is most commonly a result of the desire to engage in new gaming
experiences. Viewed in this light, the hobbyist is what marketing theorists
term an “accumulator” (Belk et al., 1988, p. 548)— that is, one who acquires
significant quantities of related items for their utilitarian and/or aesthetic
value. However, as Lawrence Belk observes, the accumulator is closely related
to another role, that of the collector (1995, p. 67). In the acquisition of games,
slippage between these two roles may often be unconscious:
I have a suspicion that a lot of gamers periodically give in to a “collecting”
urge even though they’re not collectors. They only buy games to play, and
they already have more than enough games to play, but when something shiny
and new comes along, they still want it. And then at some point, they end up
like me — looking at a closet full of unplayed games and wondering, What was
I thinking? [Carroll, 2008a].
134 EUROGAMES
culture (1992). Media theorist John Fiske describes this process as “textual
productivity,” pointing to motivation and circulation as key differentiators
between these products and “legitimate” texts:
Fans produce and circulate among themselves texts which are often created
with production values as high as any in the official culture. The key differ-
ences between the two are economic rather than ones of competence, for fans
do not write or produce their texts for money; indeed, their productivity typi-
cally costs them money.
There is also a difference in circulation; because fan texts are not produced
for profit, they do not need to be mass-marketed, so unlike official culture,
fan culture makes no attempt to circulate its texts outside its own community
[1992, p. 39].26
In discussing the ways in which some leisure subcultures can be perceived
as “copyrighted,” Fine pays particular attention to games as a consumer good
that are manufactured and purchased by members of a specific culture, with
the entrepreneur providing the rules by which games are played (1989). How-
ever, as Fine notes, the communal nature of gaming subcultures often com-
plicates understandings of authority, such that players perceive themselves as
having ownership of the game, and thus the freedom to manipulate the rules
and engage creatively with texts. Reflecting this, the history of hobby gaming
culture is replete with examples of creative textual productivity that date back
to long before the rise of the Internet. Early wargame magazines are filled
with suggested rule variants — a tradition that is continued in fanzines such
as Sumo and Counter— while many hobby games have inspired enthusiasts to
develop alternative rules, maps, and scenarios that modify the base game.
Role-playing games in particular encourage creativity through the provision
of a rules system that is adaptable to a wide variety of scenarios and player-
created narratives.
While the existence of an active participatory culture is not predicated
upon the presence of digital communication technologies ( Jenkins, 2002b;
Merrick, 2004), the avenues of communication provided by the Internet have
helped to foster a community of gamers who are able to circulate fan products
to a large and geographically dispersed audience. The wide availability of dig-
ital design tools and the simplicity of downloading and printing graphic files
have resulted in a wide variety of supplementary documents being available
via the files section of boardgamegeek.
The most common form of downloadable fan-created content on the
site arises from a perceived shortcoming of published games. Player aids, at-
a-glance summaries of the process of play, are available for a large number of
games. While some are simple text documents intended merely as a handy
reference tool, others elaborately incorporate graphics from the original game
6. Hobby Gamers 137
in order to provide a document that not only assists in play but also augments
the published game. In some cases, where the rulebook published with the
game is considered inadequate, enthusiasts have entirely rewritten the rules
in order to make the game more accessible for others.27 Given the European
origins of many games, rules translations too are common.
While these forms of content creation are undertaken out of perceived
necessity, more elaborate examples of textual productivity can be seen in the
many fan-produced expansions for games. Examples include numerous expan-
sions for Carcassonne,28 fan-created maps for rail games such as Age of Steam
and Railroad Tycoon (Drover and Wallace, 2005), and the development of
new cards for games such as Dominion and Race for the Galaxy (Lehmann,
2007).
Interestingly, perhaps due to the often-tenuous relationship between
theme and mechanics in many eurogames, another common form of fan-
created content involves re-theming games with other icons of geek culture.
Days of Wonder’s popular cooperative game Shadows over Camelot (Cathala
and Laget, 2005), has been re-imagined in the realm of Monty Python’s Holy
Grail, while Reiner Knizia’s Egyptian-themed auction game Ra is transposed
to a world of surreal horror inspired by H. P. Lovecraft in Rathulhu. The
ancient war-themed card game Battle Line (Knizia, 2000c)— itself a re-
theming of the original Schotten Totten (Knizia, 1999e)29— can be downloaded
from the site in a file that replaces all of the cards with characters from the
television series The Simpsons. In cases where games have long been out of
print, some fans have taken it upon themselves to produce freely available
downloads of entire games, with graphical components either rendered specifi-
cally for this purpose or appropriated from copyright-free sources.30
The fact that this type of fan activity occurs largely unhindered speaks
to the relationship between game hobbyists and the small industry that caters
to them. As Richard Busch observes, a consequence of the 20th century shift
towards the domestic sphere in the practice of leisure was that pastimes became
less subject to the hegemonic values of society (1990). Hobby businesses par-
ticularly tend to grow out of small entrepreneurial foundations that are com-
monly the work of hobbyists themselves. Thus, the micro-industries that
sprang from this shift are not entirely “impositions of monolithic capital” (p.
19) but have come to embody a negotiated relationship between the consumer
and the producer. Due to the fact that the majority of individuals working
within the hobby gaming industry are themselves members of the culture,
the industry operates, for the most part, in a manner quite dissimilar to that
of the prototypical capitalist business (Winkler, 2006).
Since hobby board gaming occupies such a niche in English-speaking
countries, significant value is placed on word-of-mouth marketing. A game
138 EUROGAMES
the site plays for prospective designers and publishers lies in the ability to dis-
seminate information to hobbyists. Jeremiah Lee, the designer of Zombies in
my Pocket (2009a), highlights the importance of the community in raising
awareness of what was originally a free print and play game:
The Geek was a big influence on my process, as I hadn’t heard of PnP games
until I came here, and without all the people that printed, played, loved, and
rated ZimP, it wouldn’t have found a publisher [Lee, 2009b].
Jackson Pope of Reiver Games is an example of an independent publisher
for whom the boardgamegeek community has been significant in raising aware-
ness of his games:
I designed Border Reivers 34 a couple of years before I found the Geek, but
coming here definitely gave me the impetus to self-publish. I made 100 copies
by hand and they sold out within 11 months, largely due to the Geek. So then
I published 300 copies of Yehuda’s It’s Alive! 35 ... again by hand, and again it
sold out within a year. Since then I’ve gone into it full-time and got a re-print
of It’s Alive! manufactured for me and a third game, Carpe Astra,36 by Ted
Cheatham and I [2009].
A wonderful example of the relationship between the hobbyist commu-
nity and the industry can be found in Steve Zamborsky’s game Cleopatra’s
Caboose (Zamborsky, 2010). In 2005, boardgamegeek user Chuck Uherske cre-
ated a tongue-in-cheek geeklist entitled Things I’m Sick Of!, which lampooned
particularly overused tropes within the gaming hobby (2005).37 Listed among
these were Egyptian-themed games, auction games and train games. In a
response to the list, amateur designer Zamborsky commented that he was
currently working on “a game that auctions off trains. In Ancient Egypt.”
Another user chimed in with the (again, tongue-in-cheek) suggestion that
the game should be titled “Cleopatra’s Caboose.” Zamborsky describes how
the game came to be:
When I read that Geeklist, I thought it would be pretty funny to comment
that I was working on a game that combined several of those elements, even
though I wasn’t. Apparently, my subconscious thought otherwise and my
mind had been processing some things that I wasn’t aware of, because next
thing I know I’m writing down notes for Caboose after waking up one day.
Some more notes later, I realized I had to create the prototype to test the ideas
and make sure that what I came up with worked. The rest, as they say, is his-
tory [2009].
History, in this case, saw the game picked up for development by Z-Man
Games, with characters whose names are derived partly from historic railroad
barons and partly from Egyptian gods.38 Released in late 2010, Cleopatra’s
Caboose is an elaborate in-joke, an inspired parody of modern strategy games
that reflects the close relationship between hobbyists and game publishers.
140 EUROGAMES
As is common within niche hobbies, the line between consumer and cre-
ator within the board gaming hobby is frequently blurred by the activities of
enthusiasts, whether this is in the form of developing supplementary materials
for existing products or through more formal participation in the industry.
Board game hobbyists are not passive consumers, detached from the industry
that supports their interests; they share a “sense of identity and feeling of
inclusiveness” engendered by a mutual enthusiasm for the activity of gaming
(Winkler, 2006, p. 148). Not surprisingly, then, there is a tendency to share
this enthusiasm with those outside of the hobby.
Perhaps the most interesting trait of hobby board gaming culture in terms
of its relationship to the mainstream lies in the belief shared by many members
6. Hobby Gamers 141
that hobby games — particularly eurogames — have the potential for far
broader appeal. While a degree of enthusiasm for sharing is to be expected in
any hobby, there is a perception that unlike other forms of hobby gaming,
which require a degree of involvement with a marginalized subculture,
eurogames could achieve considerable popularity given sufficient exposure.
After all, since the roots of eurogames lie in titles that are designed to be
played by the family rather than by dedicated hobbyists, it seems natural to
some hobbyists that these should supplant mainstream American games. As
a result, many players see themselves in an evangelical role, with every person
a potential recruit to the hobby.
Boardgamegeek members commonly talk about the successes and failures
they have experienced in attracting new players, and discuss ways in which
they might be more effective in drawing in friends and family to share the
perceived pleasures of the hobby. Frequent discussions as to which games are
most effective in introducing newcomers have led to the adoption of the term
“gateway games” to describe aesthetically attractive and relatively accessible
games. A common belief is that many non-gamers view board games in a
negative light due to their previous exposure to mainstream games:
I will keep trying to introduce TGOO39 to people who haven’t seen them for
the sheer satisfaction that I get from watching someone’s face when they ask
which piece can they move and be told, “Any of them!” Which direction?
“Any.” Etc. There are people out there that really believe (because they’ve
never seen another type of game) that you roll dice, count spaces and do what
the new space says [Russell, 2008].
As hobbyist Scott Russell suggests here, there is more to introducing players
to the hobby than sitting them down in front of an unfamiliar game. In the
USA the image persists that board games are the domain of children. Although
modern hobbyists might see their choice of games as being a world apart from
other styles of games, this perception is not commonly shared. As one hobbyist
comments:
Board games just aren’t as social[ly] acceptable in the U.S. That’s what it boils
down to. On the other hand, it’s not as bad to have DVD collection of
movies, TV shows, documentaries, and concerts that fill up an entire wall. It’s
not as “socially awkward” to put on face paint, scream at referees, and easily
spend hundreds to thousands of $$ for season tickets for sports games [Yao,
2008].
From another perspective, it is not so much that board games themselves
are perceived as problematic, but the degree of enthusiasm and interest shown
by hobbyists. Negative stereotypes that have historically been attached to the
enthusiastic pursuit of gaming and other “geek” interests persist. As a conse-
quence of this perceived stereotyping, some members attest to not mentioning
142 EUROGAMES
their hobby for fear of such connotations, while others describe creative ways
in which to distance themselves from this image:
I always stress that I play German import games. It makes it sound really
exotic, and thus makes you sound less obsessive and geeky. The response is
always, “Huh, that’s interesting.” and then I can give the spiel about the dif-
ferences between American and German games. Something like, “German
games have been refined so that they emphasize a wonderful and dynamic
social experience ... blah blah blah.” The key is to try and talk about them as
if you were talking about fine wine or antiques [Carr, 2005].
The idea that the play of games by adults is not socially acceptable in the U.S.
is complicated by the huge rise in popularity of video games over the last
three decades. Particularly in the last ten years it has become far more accept-
able for adults to not only engage with games, but to incorporate them into
their lives on a level comparable with other recreational media. Strangely,
while the millions who play these games regularly attest to the popularity of
games in general, it would seem that there still remains something a little too
“geeky” about gathering with friends to play with physical components.
One explanation commonly offered for the dismissal of board gaming as
a legitimate leisure pursuit draws on the perceived intellectualism of geek cul-
ture generally and board games specifically. This line of thought among hob-
byists runs that since board gaming draws such a relatively well-educated
audience, it is predictable that the majority would not enjoy them:
I can’t speak for the world, here in the U S of A, a vast majority of people
really don’t want to think. Not deep down. Either because they are tired or
busy or stressed or simply uninformed, they don’t seek out anything but “nor-
mal.” Look at popular music, popular television, popular news channels, pop-
ular political commentators, popular books, popular anything, and you’ll see a
preponderance of “please don’t make me think.” ... People (for the most part)
want to be spoon-fed their entertainment. Occasionally they will enter a
thought-provoking discourse or activity, but it’s usually the exception and
rarely the norm. Even gateway games make you think. And as a nice diver-
sion, they are a nice diversion. But that’s what they will remain. A momentary
diversion in between spoon-feedings [Winter, 2008].
This attitude bears comparison to the notion of “slans” in science fiction fan-
dom — those who consider themselves in possession of an unspoken truth
bestowed by superior intelligence and familiarity with particular texts. How-
ever, where slans perceived their authority to be grounded in a tacit under-
standing of science and the world-changing potential of technology ( James,
1994, p. 136), the evangelist gamer occupies a far more conservative position.
Here, the “truth” that is celebrated is the benefit of active participation in an
intellectually challenging and social hobby as set against a society where main-
6. Hobby Gamers 143
are finding a new home on smart phones and tablet devices. Whether these
implementations can still be considered board games is a matter for debate.
Certainly in cases where players are not co-located there are likely significant
ramifications for the way that play unfolds as a social activity. Still, the success
of these titles points to the resilience of European-style designs in crossing
media boundaries. While the chances of The Settlers of Catan replacing Monop-
oly as a family staple are perhaps small, all indications are that games that
were previously only known to a niche audience are beginning to gain some
visibility outside hobbyist circles.
Gaming isn’t about rolling dice and moving your piece around a track. Gam-
ing is about interactions, decisions and social skills.— Alan Moon, in
Aleknevicus, 2002
146
7. The Pleasures of Play 147
A number of writers have argued that flow is a state also associated with the
play of video games (Holt and Mitterer, 2000; Sherry, 2004; Cowley et al.,
2008) and of games generally (Koster, 2005, p. 98; Salen and Zimmerman,
2004, pp. 336–339). This pursuit of optimal experience —“satisfying in its
own right”— reflects Huizinga’s assertion regarding the intrinsic motivations
of play. Although games are widely understood to be intrinsically motivating,
the reasons for enjoyment are myriad and may vary widely from game to game
and from player to player. Generally speaking, however, we can assume that
the anticipation of some form of enjoyment is a contributing factor to the
148 EUROGAMES
reasons that people engage in particular leisure activities. While it is not the
only factor, it is certainly an important element in the motivation to play.
Game designer Raph Koster attributes the inherent fun in all games to
the act of cognitive problem solving, suggesting that the pleasure of game
play can be summarized as “the act of mastering a problem mentally” (2005,
p. 90). Nicole Lazzaro focuses on emotion as the central source of player
enjoyment in games (2004). In doing so, she identifies “four keys” that, she
proposes, unlock emotions within players: the “hard fun” that is found in
problem solving; the “easy fun” derived from immersion; the “altered states”
produced by internal experience; and the “people factor” that comes from
viewing games as mechanisms for social experiences. In a more generalized
framework, Marc LeBlanc proposes “eight kinds of fun” that are commonly
derived from video games: sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship,
discovery, expression and submission (2005).
These are just a few examples of the models that have been proposed to
explain player enjoyment of games.5 In reviewing these models, it is clear that
pleasure is derived from a wide variety of emotions and experiences that arise
from the play of games. Why then, given the variety of game forms available
within a society, does an individual choose to play a particular game or style
of game?
Figure 7.2: To what degree do you generally enjoy the following mechanics/game
styles in board and table games? (summarized for clarity).
7. The Pleasures of Play 151
Figure 7.3: To what degree is the presence of the following elements important
to your enjoyment of board and table games?
152 EUROGAMES
gauge their importance for hobbyists. This list of constitutive elements was
developed through my own observations and through analysis of critical com-
mentary on the hobby from various sources. While the meanings of these are
mostly transparent, some have more domain-specific denotations within the
board gaming hobby and are explained in more depth in the sections where
I discuss their importance for players. Survey respondents were asked to what
degree the presence of these elements was important in their enjoyment of board
and table games. The responses to this question are detailed in Figure 7.3.
Replayability
The more the game gets played, the more you discover its depth.— R512
particularly complex challenge. Given the roots of the genre in family gaming
and the associated emphasis on approachability, it is not surprising to find
that the operational rules of the game system are usually relatively intuitive.
In contrast with examples such as wargames and collectible card games, where
comprehensive knowledge of the operational rules commonly requires a degree
of dedication to the game, Lewis Pulsipher has suggested that the systems of
most eurogames can be understood after only one play (2009b). Thus, the
designs of eurogames assume that the core intellectual challenge arises from
the interaction between players. While all multiplayer games draw on this ele-
ment to some degree, the predominance of eurogames designed for more than
two players tends to elevate the significance of player interaction as a deter-
minant of the game outcome. Boardgamegeek founder Derk Solko explains
the impact of multiple players when compared with two-player games:
In any multi-player situation, every move every player takes has effects beyond
the player’s action. In a two-player game, this facet is referred to as “zero-
sum”: every action which is good for me, is bad for you. However, the exis-
tence of other players muddles the equation. Which is why players often just
say, “I’m playing to better my situation.” But as much as players deny it ...
what other players do during the game has more effect on your performance
than what you do [2005].
The importance of player interaction in eurogames stems from the way
that particular mechanics draw on the psychology of competitive play to chal-
lenge players. Unlike single-player games of progression, where mastery of
the underlying game system is the path to completion, in multi-player games
the system generally acts as a framework within which players implement
strategies and tactics in competition with other participants. Pulsipher
describes this characteristic in his discussion of the systemic and psychological
elements of games:
The second part to playing games is understanding how the players interact
with the system, learning how to recognize what the players are trying to do,
and finally figuring out how to forecast and to manipulate the other players.
We might call this knowing the psychology of the game, as opposed to know-
ing the system [2009b].
Pulsipher here is making a distinction that, on the surface, appears quite obvi-
ous. However, it is one that has significant ramifications for understanding
the distinction between social and solitary play. In multi-player games the
ability to read player intent, to anticipate the play of opponents and to manip-
ulate the perceptions of other players is a critical component in successful
play. While understanding a game system allows a player to play the game
competently, it is the interpersonal psychology that the game provokes which
provides the principal challenge. As one respondent observes:
7. The Pleasures of Play 157
All games have an element of the unknown, as each player will use different
paths to get to the victory conditions. It is that implied chaos that makes games
interesting and so replayable. Games are as much about strategy and tactics as
they are about social interaction and the ability to “read” people [R77].
Given the preponderance in modern eurogames of mechanics that offer
indirect interaction, it is interesting to note that both indirect and direct
player interaction are considered important, though the latter finds slightly
more favor.14 Notably, this does not indicate a preference for direct conflict,
a form of interaction considered relatively unimportant in player enjoyment.15
Rather, players clearly enjoy being able to interact with each other within the
context of a game, either directly or indirectly:
I value interaction in board games. Just as I far prefer multi-player computer
games to single-player ones, I wouldn’t sit down and play a solitaire board
game by myself, but I seek out opportunities to play with others [R93].
The opportunity to interact with others is my most basic pleasure. Another
rewarding aspect is to develop a plan and successfully execute the plan when
all others involved are trying to do the same thing. Challenging and beating a
computer opponent in a game is one thing; to win against other thinking
beings that have the same goal of defeating others is exciting [R722].
I enjoy games with high interaction, either cooperative or competitive. I love
the social aspect that lacks in computer games, even multi-player ones [R352].
[I enjoy] the interaction with the choices other people make in the game and
how the players play off of each other [R371].
As discussed earlier, interaction in eurogames is often indirect, as the
mechanics of the game rarely facilitate the kinds of direct conflict that are
associated with many classical abstract games and Anglo-American hobby
games. Pulsipher notes that eurogame designers are increasingly developing
games in which player interaction is limited and the focus is on players devel-
oping an economic “engine” in relative isolation through the course of the
game. In this style, Pulsipher argues, “the psychological component does not
exist, or barely exists, and the game only has a system component as though
it was a traditional video game” (2009b).16 Given that the majority of survey
respondents indicate a preference for eurogames yet also place a great deal of
emphasis on the interaction derived from game play, a question arises as to
how, if not through direct interaction, eurogames facilitate this psychological
dimension of play in their mechanics.
Interaction in Eurogames
I have previously described a number of informally defined “mechanics”
that are commonly found in eurogames. I also pointed to the fact that, of
158 EUROGAMES
these, set collection and area control were more accurately defined as goal-
types rather than mechanics. If for this reason we omit these two forms, we
are left with the common interaction forms of tile placement, auctions, role
selection/worker placement and trading/negotiation. Each of these forms of
interaction is concerned with gaining ownership of some in-game element,
be they a part of the environment, resources or actions. Interesting is the fact
that of these four, the mechanic of trading/negotiation stands out as one that
is the most direct form of interaction yet is also the only one that is largely
collaborative in nature. For this reason I will discuss this mechanic separately,
following consideration of the other three forms of interaction.
Tile placement is most commonly concerned with gaining ownership of
parts of the game environment. Conflict arises when more than one player
seeks ownership of a particular area. Thus, the conflict is decided asynchro-
nously through a player’s choice to place a particular tile. This choice may
be restricted by the opportunities presented through the game system (e.g.,
random elements), but the onus on the player is to evaluate his or her own
priorities and simultaneously evaluate any other player’s intentions to shape
the environment. This evaluative process informs the decision to place a given
tile at any specific moment or in a particular location.
Role selection and worker placement operate in a similar manner to tile
placement, as players seek to gain ownership of the rights to a particular in-
game action. Again, the decision to select an action is simultaneously informed
by the player’s own priorities and the evaluation of the intent of other players.
In both role selection/worker placement and tile placement, the decisions
faced by the players revolve around prioritization and the evaluation of intent.
Since role selection and worker placement are typically procedural in nature,
as Pulsipher notes, this type of interaction can be characterized as “make the
right choice before the other person does” (2009a).
Auctions in games are used as a mechanism for gaining ownership of a
wide assortment of in-game elements. In examples where the auction is of
the simple “once-around” variety, there is a clear similarity to tile placement
and role selection/worker placement in terms of the nature of the decision.
Here the player is called upon to assess the worth of a particular in-game ele-
ment without necessarily having any explicit information concerning how
much other players value it. In the more common form of English auctions,
a player may have more informed knowledge of an object’s worth through
the evaluation of other players’ bids but must still balance their own valuation
with that of others.
The interactions arising from each of these mechanics are indirect, as
any conflict between players is resolved asynchronously. Following this obser-
vation, it is now clear why players regard area control as a mechanic rather
7. The Pleasures of Play 159
than a goal, and, furthermore, why Appelcline considers the form very close
to auctions (2005a). The procedural placement of game elements to an area
on the board is similar to the three mechanics discussed here since it calls
upon players to evaluate the worth of particular areas and, as such, draws on
the need for players to read their opponents’ intentions for placement.
Importantly, the mechanics of trading and negotiation typically operate
in a distinctly different fashion than do tile placement, auctions, role selec-
tion/worker placement and area control. Firstly, trading and negotiation are
typically synchronous in that players are simultaneously engaged in the pursuit
of an outcome. Secondly, unlike the mechanics discussed above, the perform-
ance of negotiation with other players is a collaborative one in which multiple
players seek optimal results. Thus, eurogames commonly use indirect inter-
action to resolve conflict and direct interaction to facilitate collaboration.
Die Siedler von Catan can be used to highlight this distinction between
forms of conflict and collaboration. Through the course of the game players
build settlements, cities and roads on a hex-based map of limited size. Since
players may not encroach on another player’s buildings, there is conflict
between players to establish roads and settlements quickly — to gain ownership
of the game environment — before the available space is used up. As players
take their turns, this conflict is resolved asynchronously with each player seek-
ing to “make the right choice before the other person does.” However, since
the construction of these game elements requires resources that are unevenly
distributed between players, they must negotiate trades in order to build.
Here the interaction is synchronous and therefore direct, but is not a source
of conflict but rather an opportunity for collaboration.
In each of the mechanics described above, it is clear that competent
gameplay requires the ongoing evaluation of player intent. The ability to assess
the importance of in-game elements to another player requires the formation
of a mental model of that player’s intention for future actions within the game.
Similarly, evaluating the worth of a particular element in the context of an
auction or a trade is dependent upon making assumptions about the value
others place upon that item. These skills are some of those to which Pulsipher
refers when he describes the psychology of a game. They are certainly an ele-
ment of player interaction that survey respondents enjoy:
[I enjoy] the ability to distinguish what other players are doing, and why. See-
ing different strategies in action is a lot of fun [R190].
[I enjoy] setting up a strategy; guessing other players strategys [sic]; surprising
and misleading other players [R1].
[I enjoy] trying new strategies and coming up with a really good one that wins
the game. It usually gets quickly adapted to, forcing you to try more new
160 EUROGAMES
The best games are ones that require a good amount of discussion and interac-
tion among players but not in excess.... If I wanted to play a game without
talking to people I’d have stayed home and played it online [R145].
While eurogames typically offer little opportunity for direct conflict,
they operate to promote social interaction between players on two levels.
Firstly, the asynchronous mechanics that focus on gaining ownership call upon
players to carefully evaluate their opponents’ intent. This form of interaction
shifts the focus of play away from the game space and towards other players.
As Parlett describes of modern games generally, the play is centered “above
the board, in the minds of the players themselves” (1999, p. 7). Secondly,
through synchronous interactions, such as trade, players collaborate in the
pursuit of mutually beneficial outcomes. It is clear that for survey respondents
this kind of stimulated and mediated interaction remains an important factor
in their enjoyment of specific titles.
I appreciate that the games I play are tactile and physical objects that can be
manipulated within a system of simple rules [R120].
I also take a great amount of pleasure from simply handling the pieces and
moving them around [R79].
Board games draw upon the tactile pleasures associated with toys. The descrip-
tion Costikyan provides of “pushing around little military figures” brings to
mind the pleasures of childhood play with miniature worlds that Chaim Gin-
gold posits as a source of gratification in the play of video games (2003).19
Notably, the tactility of board games and the opportunity they provide to
interact directly with the game world were explicitly compared with the intan-
gibility of video games by a number of respondents:
I like the physical nature of board games compared to computer/video
games — rolling dice, holding cards, collecting wooden cubes [R580].
I love the “unplugged” nature of board games. Everything else in my life
seems to be digital, it is really nice to sit down at a table with some friends
and have a good time with just some simple bits of wood and paper [R735].
areas of the hobby game industry where the quality of eurogames has
prompted a rise in production values generally.
one person may seem a well-integrated theme may to another appear merely
loosely connected with the mechanics. A good example of this subjectivity
can be found in discussions of Knizia’s Euphrat and Tigris, which is seen by
some players as a richly thematic game of development in the cradle of civi-
lization and by others as a dry, abstract game of tile placement.
Where players do discuss specific themes and mechanics, there is often
a reference to the kinds of constructive endeavors that are typically emphasized
in the design of eurogames:
I prefer themes that relate to building and improving. Games that involve
building a point generating “engine” are favourites of mine [R177].
I like games that are not so much about hurting other players as making
moves that help them less than they help you (e.g., role selection in Puerto
Rico.) I enjoy “building something” over the course of the game — managing
resources in order to most efficiently convert them into points by the game’s
end. I like conflict where other players can interfere in this process (e.g., in
Caylus, claiming a building that you need or beating you to the castle), but
not where they can somehow take away or tear down what you’ve already done
(e.g., in Settlers, by stealing a resource from you using the robber or a Monop-
oly card) [R176].
reduces the possibility for strategy formation, a trait of games that is consid-
ered important by players. For the most part, survey respondents did not seem
to object to the presence of luck, but rather considered it unimportant in
their enjoyment. Most commonly, randomness was considered acceptable as
long as it was not perceived as pivotal in determining the outcome of the
game:
[I don’t enjoy] too much randomness or luck which can’t be mitigated or aug-
mented by strategic/tactical play [R680].
I enjoy an element of luck in games because I like the excitement it brings,
but it shouldn’t dominate [R456].
I have no problem with luck as long as it does not directly influence the win-
ner of the game (for example, Risk is fine, the luck is predictable and, if
planned for, avoidable) [R697].
The presence of chaos is also considered by players to be unimpor-
tant in their enjoyment. In common parlance, chaos refers to events that
are either unpredictable or random. In gaming terms, chaos describes ele-
ments that are determined by the actions of other players but sufficiently
unpredictable as to be perceived as random events.20 Chaos is closely tied to
two factors: player numbers and the degree to which they can alter the game
state. In a game of Chess one does not perceive the actions of the opponent
as random events. Yet when the number of players is increased — as is often
the case with eurogames — there is often a rise in the perception that the sum
of player actions is random. Salen and Zimmermen refer to this element as a
“feeling of randomness” and describe the experience in the game of Chinese
Checkers:
If you closed your eyes and opened them only when it is your turn to move, it
might seem like the board is merely reshuffling itself, particularly in the mid-
dle period of the game, when the center area is most crowded. This feeling of
randomness is only an illusion, however, as there is no formal chance mecha-
nism in the game. Perfectly logical players (who only exist in hypothetical
examples) wouldn’t feel any randomness: they could look at the board and
immediately trace every move back to a series of strategic decisions [2004, p.
176].
While the hypothetical players that Salen and Zimmerman describe might be
able to distinguish the pattern of plays that occur in an open-information
abstract game, the prevalence of imperfect information and the implementa-
tion of truly random elements in eurogames contributes to the perception of
such events as being beyond player discernability. Given the importance play-
ers place upon strategic planning, it is not surprising to find that the presence
of chaos is not a significant contributor to player enjoyment.
166 EUROGAMES
Figure 7.4: From what aspects of play do you derive the most pleasure generally?
(open-ended).
game and that which is spontaneous and voluntary (2000). Zagal cites games
such as Tag and Disease (Stevens, 1998) as those wherein the mechanics of the
game specifically call upon players to interact socially. As identified earlier, a
number of mechanics commonly implemented in eurogames are used to gen-
erate this kind of social interaction (e.g., auctions, negotiations, etc.) However,
it is not this form of in-game interaction that players are describing when
they cite the pleasure of social interaction as principle in their enjoyment, but
rather the spontaneous interaction that occurs as a by-product of game play.
As Zagal observes, the presence of this kind of spontaneous interaction
within a specific instance of a game is completely independent from the nature
of the game itself, but is rather a product of player composition (2000, p.
452). Theoretically, it is possible to play all multiplayer games without any
spontaneous interaction whatsoever. Yet as Zagal also notes, “It is hard to
imagine playing a board game of any sort without engaging in idle talk with
other players” (p. 451). Where we might envisage a multi-player game played
over the Internet without such spontaneous interaction, the shared physical
space and components have a profound effect on the nature of the game
encounter. Indeed, in co-located play, participation typically involves far more
than the performance of game mechanics.
In understanding this relationship between games and interaction, the
work of sociologist Erving Goffman is particularly relevant. In his essay “Fun
in Games,” Goffman describes the play of co-located games as a type of
“focused gathering”:
For the participants, this involves: a single visual and cognitive focus of atten-
tion, a mutual and preferential openness to verbal communication; a height-
ened mutual relevance of acts; an eye-to-eye ecological huddle that maximizes
each participant’s opportunity to perceive the other participant’s monitoring
of him [1961, pp. 17–18].
moment as much as in the game itself (p. 37). He describes three reasons why
such involvement is significant. Firstly, the acknowledgment of shared focus
provides a sense of security for all players. Secondly, it increases relatedness
through mutual involvement. Finally, it confirms the reality of the shared
world of play (1961, p. 40).
Significantly, Goffman suggests that it is only in face-to-face play that
this spontaneous involvement can be communicated to other players.
Although he writes before the emergence of computer-mediated play, Goff-
man’s observations regarding games played at a distance are equally applicable
to these forms22:
Multi-situated games and game-like activities can define the situation for their
participants and create a world for them. But this is a loose world for the indi-
vidual, allowing for periods of lack of interest and for wide variation in atti-
tude and feelings.... The world of a multi-situated game can be lightly
invested in, so that while the game defines the situation it does not bring the
situation into lively existence [1961, p. 41].
It is this “lively existence” that defines the play of co-located games as social
experiences. Where we might talk about “social games” and incorporate
into this definition any game played by multiple players, the experience of
co-located play is circumscribed by the spontaneous interactions from
which players derive pleasure and from which they indicate their involve-
ment to other participants. As respondents indicate in this survey, it is not
so much the in-game interactions that provide the pleasure of play, but the
shared involvement and the social interactions that arise from the gaming
encounter.
Researcher Nicole Lazzaro describes the pleasure engendered by this rich
social interaction as “people fun” (2004). Board and table games bring players
together within a shared social space — typically a domestic one — and thus
require a capacity for informal sociability. The process of coming together
and engaging in conversation within an informal environment necessarily
provides context for the more formal experience of playing a game. As Lazzaro
describes, the attractiveness of this form of interaction is evident in those
players who say “it’s the people that are addictive not the game” (2004).
I play games as a way to relax, spend time with family and friends. These are
social games [R143].
I enjoy the social interaction. I have a regular weekly game group that will try
any game. We can experiment struggling through something new, or play an
old favorite, it doesn’t matter, the conversations, in-jokes, and fun remain no
matter what. If the social interaction wasn’t there, there is not a point to play
[R164].
What I like most about playing boardgames is that it gives me a good social
outlet. It’s “play,” with all that suggests, and it allows social interaction over a
particular event [R608].
I think I play games at this point more as a social medium than to find a
specific in-game experience. The eurogame model of design has allowed for
people to get together for an evening of play, with some chit chat and snacks,
to enjoy the games and interacting with each other. I wouldn’t characterize the
games themselves as the most enjoyable for what I want out of a game, as they
tend to be a little too abstract and themeless; however, I bend to the reality of
time and other obligations and get what I can out of the games that work for
the group [R361].
The comments listed here are just a few of the many that emphasized the
social experience of play as paramount in the enjoyment of board games gen-
erally. Such responses indicate why enthusiasts have a tendency to evangelize
the hobby — it is not so much the games that are being evangelized, but the
sense of sociability and security that must necessarily accompany them. That
is, it is not the game, but the game encounter, that provides this. The par-
ticular form of semi-structured social interaction that spontaneously occurs
through co-located play provides an intrinsic motivation to engage with the
hobby.
The importance placed by players on social interaction stands in contrast
to a number of the pleasures that were earlier identified as being associated
with video game play. While Csikszentmihalyi’s model of flow may be appli-
cable to the focused play of a game, as Sweetster and Wyeth note, social inter-
action often serves to disrupt immersion and thus the flow state (2005).
Koster’s suggestion that cognitive problem solving provides the fun in games
is reflected here to a degree; yet when Koster describes the “social fun” that
can be derived from play, it is framed largely in terms of schadenfreude,23 a
focus on achievement that was largely absent in responses. Lazzaro too men-
tions schadenfreude, although her estimation of social pleasure is closer to the
findings of this survey, as she discusses the camaraderie that is brought about
by shared goals. Finally, Hunicke et al.’s notion of fellowship, which sees
games as a “social framework,” falls closest to the types of pleasure described
by participants in emphasizing the playful social interaction engendered by
172 EUROGAMES
The true gamer doesn’t play for winning, but he knows that trying to win
creates the “plot” in a game. Therefore s/he adheres to the plot “everybody tries
to win” easily, but can immediate [sic] forget the failure as the enjoyment of
the game moved on by the plot is bigger than the disappointment of not win-
ning.— Eggert in Heli, 2007
In the previous chapter I identified the key aspects of board game play
that appeal to hobbyists, noting that while certain game elements may con-
tribute to player enjoyment, generally speaking it is the social aspect of play
that provides the principal form of pleasure. While intellectual challenge, in-
game interaction and a variety of other elements are considered significant as
traits of specific games, the overall pleasure derived from games is found in the
sociability that accompanies play. Given that the vast majority of modern
board games are ostensibly framed around competition, a question arises as to
how players negotiate competitive play within the social context that surrounds
the gaming encounter. In short, how do players manage the apparent oppo-
sition between sociability and competition in order to maintain the convivial
atmosphere from which pleasure is derived? In order to examine this question,
it is important firstly to understand what game goals mean to players.
173
174 EUROGAMES
game scholar Jonas Heide Smith has undertaken significant research into the
assumed goal-orientedness of players in his doctoral dissertation. His research
is concerned with analyzing the “common folk theory” that players want to
win a game (2006, p. 6). He identifies four player models which contribute
to understandings of player behavior. Of these, only two, the rational and the
active player, are actually concerned with player actions during play (pp. 23–
24).2
As Heide Smith observes, the idealized model of the rational player is
the one inherent in texts that focus upon the process of game design and
mathematical game theory (p. 257).3 Consequently, the model is predicated
on a very computational model of player behavior. The rational player’s behav-
iors are motivated entirely by the goals of the game and form an ordered set
of preferences based upon information received exclusively from the game
state and rules. As a model, the rational player provides a baseline from which
deviance can illuminate aspects of the relationship between game and player.
In observing physically co-located players of video games,4 Heide Smith’s
results demonstrate the utility of the rational player in that the model “neatly
predicts in-game behaviour” in terms of general goal-orientedness (p. 239).
Importantly however, he acknowledges that these behaviors are “subjugated
by social norms defining appropriate play” (p. 242). In practical terms, Heide
Smith observed that player behavior within the game space was largely goal-
oriented, while the social context was seen as an opportunity to share helpful
information about the game being played. As one possible motivation for
these differing behaviors, Heide Smith suggests that players are attempting to
introduce a degree of fairness to the gaming encounter. In describing this
incongruence between goal-orientedness during play and the contents of inter-
personal communication, Heide Smith introduces a distinction between the
“game circle,” wherein the rational player pursues his or her goals with com-
mitment, and the “gaming circle” wherein the social expectations of the game
in context are met (p. 228).
In making this distinction, Heide Smith highlights the existence of the
active player — that is, the player who engages in complex practices and social
interactions in ways “often not predicted or prescribed by the game designers”
(p. 24).5 Derived from semiotics and reader-response theory, the active player
is imagined as a participatory agent in the interpretation and configuration
of the game rather than a product of the game’s rules, slavishly bound to the
prescribed goals. Consequently, as Espen Aarseth notes, the active player has
proven a particularly attractive model for those who study digital games.
Examples of transgressive and subversive play, although perhaps “statistically
marginal,” are “nevertheless a crucial aspect of, and key to understanding all
kinds of play and game culture” (2007, p. 131).
176 EUROGAMES
This sharing of information between players about how the game is played
ensures that each player is conversant with the rules and mechanics of the
game, and that a level playing field is retained. Although Heide Smith refers
to this phenomenon as “self-handicapping,” this is a misnomer. Self-
handicapping is generally defined within studies of play behavior as “the delib-
erate attenuation of the force or intensity of an action by one or other play
partner in order to give the other a better chance of ‘winning’ or at least to
allow more evenly matched encounters” (Boulton and Smith, 1992, p. 436).
As indicated above, Heide Smith finds no evidence of such attenuation in his
research.
Nevertheless, it is apparent that the players in Heide Smith’s research are
communicating in order to maintain fairness and a sense of social cohesion.
In the case of video games, however, the division between the game space and
the social space is artificially clear. The video game takes place behind the
screen, while the social interactions surrounding it are located in the “real
world.” This distinction is made apparent when Heide Smith suggests that
While game playing may be one of the few spheres of life where people are in
fact expected and entitled to care only for their own objective interests ...
close-proximity verbal interaction in a couch is not [p. 228].
This distinction that Heide Smith makes between the game circle and the
gaming circle is not only imagined, but also actualized in the separation of
the player environment and the game world as displayed on screen.
The reason I raise this distinction is to contrast this with the nature of
board game play. In a board game, players not only share close physical prox-
imity, but also intimate involvement with the physical components of the
game. They are also engaged with the many mechanics employed in modern
board games that explicitly invoke social interaction between players. Given
the degree to which interpersonal psychology and social negotiations are often
8. Goals and Outcomes in Social Play 177
embedded in the ruleset of a board game, the division between play of the
game and the social interactions brought about by that play is blurred. Where
the screen space of video games allows a clear delineation between the goal-
oriented play of the game and the social expectations that accompany it, no
such boundary exists within the play of a board game other than that con-
structed by the player through the social context and degree of engagement.
ing checkmate” (1978, p. 58). However, when Suits suggests that such a player
lacks the necessary zeal for play and, in abandoning goals, is not actually
engaged in the game (p. 59), he is not drawing on the notion of the individual
rational player. Rather he is explicitly foregrounding the necessity of goal-
orientedness as it serves to facilitate the particular experience that is a game.
Suits’ definition of games clearly acknowledges the arbitrary nature of game
structures, including goals:
To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs, using only
means permitted by the rules, where the rules prohibit use of more efficient
means, and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such
activity [1978, pp. 54–55].
Here Suits is proposing that the purpose of a game is the process of the game.
The rules, goals and limitations placed upon players are there merely to facil-
itate the experience of play. Reflecting this, a number of respondents explicitly
referred to the pursuit of the victory goal as being facilitative rather than pre-
scriptive in the process of play:
Victory gives you a goal to guide you through the game to its conclusion, but
the getting there is much more interesting to me than the end result [R140].
This notion, which sees the goals of the game merely as a means to an end,
is one that was immediately called upon by many players in their responses
concerning the pursuit of victory. Despite the fact that the vast majority of
players conform to a rational model of goal-oriented play (in that they actively
seek victory), it is significant that a sizeable number felt the need to include
some type of qualification in their responses, typically highlighting the expe-
rience of play as the primary goal of a gaming encounter.
Although these respondents share a similar attitude in nominating the
experience of play as the primary goal, the experiences to which they referred
varied. In some cases the experience was the challenge presented in mastering
the game:
I tend to enjoy the games where I tend to lose more than the games where I
succeed. It would seem that I enjoy the challenge a game puts in front of me.
In order to improve, I must learn how the game is best played. A perfect
example for me of just such a game is Power Grid. I have played many times
(almost always with our games group) and yet, I have never won.... The game
forces me to learn, to be adaptive and to watch how others succeed where I
have failed. This process is fabulous. I know that I am alive and a social being
when I play a game like Power Grid [R163].
In others, the fantasy element of play is foregrounded:
Winning is not as important as the process of playing, and particularly experi-
encing the theme of the game — in “Tikal,” for instance, I enjoy the fantasy of
being part of an archaeological expedition more than I enjoy winning [R396].
8. Goals and Outcomes in Social Play 179
The importance of the social context in which play occurs can have a
strong influence on the general goal-orientedness of players. The degree of
commitment to the pursuit of the game goals is subject to a variety of con-
textual social influences that shape player behavior. As one player observes:
There is a clear axis here ranging from “decisive result” through to “experien-
tial outcome.” And, as with many of the other axes, people will disagree about
where exactly a particular game should be positioned — and, indeed some
games’ positions depend entirely upon the context in which you are playing.
Carcassonne can be played extremely cut-throat, with players who know
exactly what tiles are available and how to mess things up. Or it can be played
socially, with discussions about the best moves for other players. In one envi-
ronment you play for victory. In another you play for the experience [R587].
180 EUROGAMES
This respondent highlights the way that the social context can shape the play
of a specific game. Players may ruthlessly seek to push every advantage in a
game or they may offer assistance to players and discuss potential moves
openly. The style of play is not a product of the game’s rules but of the social
environment in which it occurs. As Espen Aarseth notes, player understand-
ings of games are often shaped by the social context in which they are first
exposed to them:
The potential player, before becoming an actual player, must receive some
instructions, either from the game itself, or from a guide or accompanying
material. Thus, the player is created, by these instructions, and by his or her
initial learning experience. In many cases, this experience is social, and the
player learns from other, more experienced players [2007, p. 130].
children, the “social matrix” she describes is clearly present in these survey
responses. A number of respondents identified a shared responsibility to main-
tain the integrity of the social fabric during the game. For these players the
unbridled pursuit of victory might be suitable in some situations, while in
others an overly competitive approach would be deemed socially inappropri-
ate:
Although I am usually playing to win the game, what is more important to
me is that people want to continue playing the game with me. If I am being
an overzealous jerk, I will soon find myself in a situation where nobody wants
to play a game with me.... I don’t want people to not desire to play games
with me regardless of whether the game is Chess, Apples to Apples, or Catan
[R569].
Here it is apparent the degree to which a player must negotiate the norms of
the specific social setting in which the game occurs. The decision to pursue
game goals without reserve may be tempered by the knowledge that this level
of competitiveness is unsuitable within a particular social context. While the
majority of players attest to pursuing goals generally, when questioned as to
when they might not do so, a wide variety of exceptional circumstances
emerge.
When there are less experienced players, I will coach them on taking a better
move or strategy, and explain why I’m doing what I am when I move. It
makes it more fun when games are balanced [R590].
If I’m showing some one how to play, or the person isn’t that experienced with
the game. I always give pointers, and try and make sure the other person play-
ing knows what their doing. Beating some one because they have little or no
understanding of what to do, isn’t fun at all [R470].
If I were playing with a less experienced player, I would feel it unfair to not
assist them in understanding the game’s mechanics. A victory would be less
rewarding in that situation for me [R503].
While assisting players with understanding how to play the game may
appear altruistic, there is clearly a degree of self-interest also evident in these
statements. Play with opponents whose skills are not evenly matched often
results in an unsatisfactory game not just for the less experienced player, but
also for the more experienced participant (Zagal et al., 2006). Although the
responses above indicate a degree of latitude in the single-minded pursuit of
victory, the proffering of assistance in understanding the mechanics of a game
falls short of actually abandoning game goals. More interesting are those
respondents who attested to actively self-handicapping through non-optimal
play when opponents are mismatched. Such occasions often coincided with
teaching new players, but, unlike earlier examples directed at assisting in
understanding the game, players here describe actively self-handicapping in
order to improve the experience for their opponents:
If I’m in a situation where I can trounce the other players, I change my
approach.... The most frequent situation where I ease off is when I’m teaching
a new game. Nothing is less fun than having somebody teach you a game, and
then wallop you with their experience in the first match. In such situations I’ll
adjust my technique by secretly adopting a handicap or choose a convoluted
approach to winning [R288].
If I was teaching a game that I like to someone who is not inclined to like it,
I’ll often check myself, and play down to their level, or even let them win so
they will have a positive first time experience [R382].
In a one-on-one session when teaching another player to play a game I would
deliberately take neutral actions which would prolong the game and provide a
more beneficial learning experience to another player. As part of this I would
allow the other player to win if they were able to master the basics of the
game. This helps in encouraging the player to play again and builds self-
confidence in the individual — this could be particularly important if the indi-
vidual was a younger member of the family or a friend who had no experience
of boardgaming. After all, who wants to play a game where they get beat every
time and the experience of the game was so poor that they were not learning
the game, and, what’s more, they felt belittled? [R494].
8. Goals and Outcomes in Social Play 183
responses of players who engage in sub-optimal play for reasons that are not
connected with the social context.
A significant number of players indicate that they may abandon the goals
of the game when they perceive themselves as being in a position from which
they cannot win the game (16 percent). Still others describe situations where
a strategy of risk-aversion is more beneficial than a direct play for victory
(about 0.5 percent). For some the desire for personal retribution within the
context of a specific game is enough for some players to set aside the goals (3
percent). Some respondents attest to a tendency not to be overly concerned
with the prescribed goals of the game when they themselves are learning (8
percent), while others may use the play of a particular game as an opportunity
to experiment with new strategies (6 percent). Here the play of the game is
not situated as an isolated event, but as part of the ongoing practice of the
hobby. Finally, a number of players suggest that their interest in the goals of
the game is reduced in games they do not enjoy (3 percent) or in the play of
lighter games (6 percent) where the emphasis is explicitly on experience over
competition.6
As can be seen, players present a wide variety of reasons why they might
not actively seek victory in a game. However, the fact that players indicate
that there exist situations in which goal-orientation would not be their primary
concern does not imply that such behavior is common — for the most part,
players tend to play a game to win as prescribed by the rules. Indeed, in all
of the situations described here the question arises as to whether players are
actually “playing” the game if they are not actively pursuing the victory con-
ditions that are explicitly stated in the rules.
It is tempting here to call on the notion of the “active player” that Heide
Smith and Aarseth suggest is of such fascination to game scholars (Heide
Smith, 2006, p. 30; Aarseth, 2007). However, in my readings of how the
active player is perceived as being engaged in “wondrous acts of transgression”
(Aarseth, 2007, p. 133), engaging with the game “in ways not prescribed by
the designer” (Heide Smith, 2006, p. 24), I find little in common with the
rationale and behaviors that are described by respondents here. None of the
activities or motivations described above could be described as “transgressive”
in terms of any deliberate attempt to undermine the game design. Arguably,
then, these players do not conform to the model of the rational player or the
active player. This is, perhaps, due to the fact that both of these models are
largely concerned with the relationship between the player and the game sys-
tem. In eurogames the relationship between the social context and the game
is significant in shaping the motivations of players. The intersection of the
abstract ruleset with the social structures that surround the game constitutes
the act of gaming.
186 EUROGAMES
Although the term gaming has come to describe the act of game-playing
generally,7 in critical terms the word has a very specific meaning. Hughes
describes the activity of gaming as “the processes by which players mold and
modulate the raw materials of their games into actual play” (1999, p. 94). The
practices Hughes describes arise from the interpersonal interactions that occur
during the play of a given game:
Rules can be interpreted and reinterpreted toward preferred meanings and
purposes, selectively invoked or ignored, challenged or defended, changed or
enforced to suit the collective goals of different groups of players. In short,
players can take the same game and collectively make of it strikingly different
experiences [p. 94].8
Understanding the gaming encounter as a socially constituted series of
exchanges with other players as opposed to a rational series of prescribed inter-
actions situates player experience as paramount to understanding the game
form. Yet it does not necessarily imply anything transgressive or deviant in
the attitudes of players. Embedding play in the context of the social fabric
which surrounds it, the teaching, learning and implied social contract of the
game become a part of the play activity as much as games between idealized
optimizers. The contrived maintenance of the level playing field seems an
appropriately fluid response to the differing levels of expertise and social expec-
tations present in the encounter. Where voluntary handicapping is present it
not only restores the competitive equilibrium that players have come to expect
from pseudo-agônistic play but also reinforces the social cohesion that is of
such importance to players in the game encounter. This emphasis on the
social fabric of the game encounter is further challenged when players are
given the opportunity to adversely affect the position of opponents.
Rationalizing Antagonism
There is a fine line between trying to win and spoiling others’ enjoyment.—
R224
game goals. Awareness of this issue is evident in responses that claim the social
connectedness between players is more important than the game-specified
goals:
I would not pursue victory if I believe I will hurt someone’s feelings by doing
so. I would not try and ruin another player’s chances at winning because I
have nothing more constructive to do [R206].
Most of the enjoyment in the games comes from seeing the game unfold, and
if all that is desired is victory, then it opens up to “three turn win or else”
strategies which are no fun.... Sure we trash talk and promises can be broken,
but there are levels of promise, and while it is ok to backstab now and again,
it’s not about winning at all costs [R579].
The idea that players are under an implicit obligation to fulfill social
responsibilities within the game is one that serves to shape the gaming
encounter in a number of ways. As I have indicated, some players are aware
that to pursue victory goals too zealously can threaten the stability of the
social setting. The question arises, then, of how players evaluate certain actions
as being inappropriate, where other actions are perfectly acceptable. While
in theory a player can be “rational,” in reality an awareness of the social context
is essential to the continuation of the game.
The option to deliberately hinder the play of others through direct or
indirect action is one area where the awareness of the social fabric is particularly
important. In traditional two-player abstract games, the zero-sum nature of
the contest demands that players seek to maximize their own position while
subverting their opponent — every move effectively hinders the other player.
Within multiplayer games, however, the decision to target another player may
be an entirely strategic one, but it is also one that runs the risk of being per-
ceived as motivated by factors other than the general goal-orientedness of
play. In this case, the choice to target another player is a critical one. The
interpretation of a player’s intent may disrupt the social fabric in ways not
intended by the antagonist.
While 64 percent of respondents perceive no problem with deliberately
hindering other players, a noteworthy number qualified their replies by
describing specific situations in which they felt such actions were a legitimate
tactic. In a number of responses to this question, this decision was framed in
particularly rational terms:
If there were four moves available, this is the order I would take them.
Benefits me and hinders an opponent. Benefits me. Hinders opponent.
Helps/hinders no one [R753].
Clearly this respondent has a highly organized and reasonable series of
priorities that inform the decision to hinder other players. This rationality is
188 EUROGAMES
also apparent in the comments of those who respond that they would only
target the game leader. This approach, colloquially referred to as “bashing the
leader,” prolongs the game for the other players, affording them opportunities
to win the game. Of those players who qualified the appropriateness of hin-
dering other players, 10 percent subscribe to this perspective:
I will attack a clear leader, but not always attack anyone else unless I have no
other option that might reasonably be considered an optimum move [R543].
If the endgame is near and there is one clear leader and I have no chance at
winning, I will hinder the leader to the detriment of my own position [R569].
In contrast, many players adopt a more nuanced approach that is depend-
ent upon the particular social situation and the perceived expectations of oth-
ers, rather than the game itself:
I am very conscious of whom I am seated with, and while I want to win, more
important to me is whether everyone had a good time. So I will evaluate the
players and decide whom I can hinder and have them still enjoy the game, as
well as who such tactics will rub wrong [R262].
I have to be sure that the other person can take the setback. I’d rather lose a
game than lose a friend [R316].
I try to “balance the meanness” around the table. I’ll endeavour to hinder dif-
ferent players at different times so as to avoid people feeling victimised and
their enjoyment being affected because of it [R704].
If you are a guest at someone’s house for a game night you don’t block their
route in Ticket to Ride [R591].
A number of respondents suggested that their decision to hinder another
player is dependent on the game being played, with a sizeable proportion of
these making some reference to the rules of the game and whether they explic-
itly allow and/or encourage this type of play (43 percent). This attitude is
also reflected in those respondents who made reference to “the spirit of the
game” or the understanding that such plays are acceptable only if they can be
construed as “sportsmanlike.”
Emerging from these responses is a clear picture of how the goal-
orientedness assumed by the rational player model is frequently undermined
in practice by the individual perspectives of players, understandings of appro-
priate forms of play and the need to balance the social world of the gaming
encounter with the competitive structure of the game. All of these elements
contradict the general assumption that players are rationally motivated agents
who always act in pursuit of the game goals. More importantly, perhaps, they
also throw into question the notion that enjoyment is derived from the attain-
ment of these goals.
8. Goals and Outcomes in Social Play 189
Heartbreaking losses and lucky last-minute wins are an important and valued
part of my gaming experience not because of the win or loss, but because of
the reactions of the participants. The playful belly-aching and playful gloating
following a game session often leads to laughter and hilarity afterwards. Pur-
suing victory is a means to this end, not an end in itself.— R643
The idea that players pursue goals and victorious outcomes as a principal
motivation for engagement with the game is a compelling and pervasive one,
particularly in writings on game design. For Juul, the enjoyment that can be
derived from a “better” outcome (i.e. victory) is one that underpins the psy-
chological state of playing a competitive game to the degree that he uses this
condition as a defining element of games (2005, p. 40). It is interesting to
note, however, that although Juul’s model is ostensibly a distillation of the
works of previous scholars, the suggestion that players are attached to one
outcome over another is not one that appears in any of the definitions from
which he draws his raw material. While the presence of a disequilibrial out-
come is included in the definition proposed by Avedon and Sutton Smith
(1971b, p. 405) and the quantifiable nature of that outcome is present in that
of Salen and Zimmerman (2004, p. 80), the idea that a player is attached in
some way to this outcome is a highly speculative one.
In terms of board game hobbyists, a favorite quotation on this subject
comes from designer Reiner Knizia: “When playing a game, the goal is to
win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.” Although this
statement displays a certain idealism about the nature of competitive gameplay,
it reinforces the notion that many players are actively conscious of the separate
nature of game goals and the ensuing valorization of outcomes. This emphasis
upon process over outcome is explicitly mentioned by a number of survey
respondents:
Playing to win is critical.... Winning itself is wholly inconsequential. I’d much
prefer to come in last than to win unchallenged. Did everyone have fun?
Good, nothing else matters [R162].
Trying to win is important, having fun is important, actual winning is not
that important [R142].
It’s important that there be a goal. It’s not important whether I win as long as
I get to try to win [R174].
190 EUROGAMES
Enjoyment as a Goal
Paglieri builds upon the work of cognitive psychologists Rosario Conte
and Cristiano Castelfranchi, who propose a model of cognition that focuses
on mental states based upon beliefs and goals (1995). Taking as a fundamental
characteristic of play the fact that players seek to enjoy the activity, Paglieri
uses this model to describe the way that different goal-types shape the expe-
rience of, and attitude towards, play (2003a). Although he discusses a number
of these goal-types and the way they shape play activities, I will limit the dis-
cussion here to the two forms that are most relevant to this survey — those
Paglieri describes as the “true player” and the “hedonistic player.”9
8. Goals and Outcomes in Social Play 191
drawing the inexperienced player back to the game provides rewards that out-
weigh the shorter-term prioritization of game goals.
The use of Paglieri’s model is productive here firstly in the way it describes
why players focus on game goals. When the primary motivation for play is
the enjoyment derived from the activity, any deviance from the prescribed
form of the play activity will result in a lesser experience — the rules and goals
of the game are central to a player’s enjoyment. Secondly, this model also
explains why some players willingly abandon the game goals in particular sit-
uations. Players for whom enjoyment is a meta-goal of the play activity will
behave in ways that are not prescribed by the rules in order to further their
enjoyment of the play experience. Both of these characteristic approaches to
play are evident in the survey responses discussed in this chapter.
experiences. The implicit rules engendered by the social gathering that sur-
rounds the play of the game serve to shape the game encounter as much as
do the explicit rules to be found within the game itself. In the next chapter
I turn my attention to how this process can not only influence the play of the
game, but also render the game experience largely dependent upon the norms
of the gaming encounter.
9
An Act Apart?
Obviously, we are never merely playing a game. Or, to say it another way,
we are never playing only one game. We are always conscious of the game’s
relation to the world in which we live, the world in which that game is one
small part.— Sniderman, 1999
So far I have described the way that players negotiate two different imper-
atives: first, the competitiveness of play that is called upon by the structure of
a game, and, second, the sociability that provides the principal source of enjoy-
ment in game play. I concluded that the majority of players do not consider
winning — the ostensibly “better” outcome — a significant element in their
enjoyment. It seems players are, for the most part, willing to abandon the
prescribed goals of the game in order to maintain the social cohesion of the
game encounter, particularly by reclaiming a sense of “fair play.”
To further explore the influence of the social context of the gaming
encounter on the play of board games the player survey included a number
of questions related to in-game activities, such as cheating, kibitzing, decep-
tion and kingmaking. Responses to these questions reveal the importance that
players place on maintaining the separation of the game world from the “real
world.” Interestingly, differing player expectations and understandings of
appropriate forms of play suggest that the explicit rules of a game act primarily
as a framework around which the actual play of a game is constructed.
Cheating
If you cheat, we are done playing.— R179
194
9. An Act Apart? 195
order to gain advantage in a game. In the play of board games, the implicit
requirement to play by the rules demands a sense of mutual trust between
players, even as the sense of competition embedded in the game structure
compels them to pursue the game goals. Unlike digital games, where the pro-
cedural rules are embedded in the algorithms of the game itself, or organized
sports, where the presence of an impartial umpire ensures compliance, board
games require that players voluntarily agree to be bound by the arbitrary con-
straints of the game system in order for the game to function. Reflecting this
requirement, 94 percent of respondents expressed a deep displeasure at the
thought of engaging in such an activity, or playing games with those who
did.
A common reaction to cheating was an insistence that such players would
be ejected from game play and would not be entertained as participants in
the future (25 percent). Respondents also placed particular emphasis on the
notion of mutual trust and the understanding that cheating not only under-
mines the game structure but also detracts from the enjoyment of other players.
Some respondents felt that cheating within the context of a social gaming
environment constituted a “pathological act” (R95) suggesting “a severe social
disorder” (R56). Some of the more emotive responses to this question
included:
Not only will you never be invited over again, but the person who first invited
you along gets thrown in the pool [R239].
People who cheat who are over 12 should be shot [R215].
Burn them at the stake [R184].
Cheaters? Stone ’em [R85].
Testicular removal is too mild a punishment for cheating [R117].
Do you mean: Do I send flowers and cards to the surviving members of the
cheater’s family? And I would say no. I would also not attend the funeral serv-
ice [R444].
These responses typify the prevalent attitude among hobbyists towards
cheating in board games. Interestingly, Mia Consalvo has explored the act of
cheating in video games, suggesting that while video game players may have
varying ideas as to what constitutes cheating in a game environment, to many,
“shortcuts or code alterations are acceptable in the space of the game” because
“games offer us a space where we can experience that freedom, without sig-
nificant consequences” (2005b). In the light of her research, Consalvo suggests
that cheating is “a way for individuals to keep playing through boredom,
through difficulty, through limited scenarios, and through rough patches or
just bad games” (2005a).
196 EUROGAMES
An Act Apart
As a part of the survey, players were asked to identify behaviors that were
considered unacceptable within the context of play. Setting aside the significant
9. An Act Apart? 197
in some cases, communicative acts aside from the in-game mechanics can play
a part in shaping the flow of play. Indeed, while for some players complaining
about an in-game situation is problematic, for others it constitutes an expected
part of the gaming encounter:
We also consider it fair, almost expected, to belly-ache about how poorly
you’re doing. Even if you’re doing quite well. And whining about how poorly
you’re doing to get out of having someone do something bad to you is also
perfectly acceptable — as long as you accept it with grace and/or humor if you
get the bad stuff anyway [R232].
For this player, it is clear that the subtle manipulation of other players
through communicative acts is not merely a side-effect of play, but another
layer of interaction that forms a fundamental aspect of social game play. This
type of play, also referred to as metagaming, is interpreted and experienced
by players in different ways.
If you don’t like the metagame, play games against a computer.— Pollard,
2008
Within the context of games as a leisure pursuit, the term metagame has
been used in a variety of ways, most of which are summarized in Richard
Garfield’s description of the phenomena. Garfield refers to the metagame as
“how a game interfaces outside of itself,” suggesting four ways that the
metagame impacts play of a given game: what players bring to a game, what
players take from a game, what players do between games, and what players
do during games (2000, p. 16). In terms of the board gaming hobby, all of
these elements can be seen to have some degree of impact on the play of a
given board game.
Players may bring previous experience of a game or similar games to the
encounter. The description offered by Garfield is so broad that one could sug-
gest that any prior play experience can be considered a part of the metagame.
As discussed earlier, in cases where particular social relations are manifest on
the gaming table in the form of grudges and/or collusion, this type of influence
is viewed in a very negative light by most gamers. Similarly, outside of the
framework of tournaments that have metagame value in terms of how they
affect overall position, it is expected that play occurs in isolation and that pre-
200 EUROGAMES
vious victories will not be factored into the play of a particular game. Ideally,
players do not bring social relations to the table, nor do they allow those real-
world relationships to be affected by play of a game. In terms of what occurs
between plays, the earlier discussion of hobby gaming culture is replete with
evidence of the way that players engage in metagame activities. Indeed,
Garfield suggests that what separates hobby games from other forms of game
is the compelling form of metagame that is offered by involvement with the
hobby (2000, p. 16).
I want to focus here on the last of the forms that Garfield describes, the
metagaming that occurs during the play of the game. In doing so, I specifically
want to address the social interactions that occur within the game that are
perceived by some players as significant in their enjoyment of social play and
by others as problematic. This type of metagame activity is clearly described
by Csilla Weninger in her analysis of social events in the collectible card game
Magic: The Gathering:
The metagame is characterized by language use that topically centers around
game analysis: the out-loud deliberation about the co-participant’s or one’s
own moves. It also includes talk about hypothetical courses of action, prima-
rily in the form of players reflecting about what the outcomes of an alternative
move might have been [2006, p. 64].
As Weninger implies, it is a natural consequence of social gaming encounters
that players engage in conversations that pertain to the play of the game. This
interaction is where much of the meaning of the game encounter is produced.
Indeed, drawing on the work of Brian Sutton Smith, Boria et al. note that
the meaning of the video game Counter Strike is not only found in the graph-
ical and mechanical elements which reside in the game itself but “in the social
mediations that go on between players through their talk with each other”
(2002). In face-to-face games this social interaction is often referred to as
“table-talk,” a name inherited from partner discussions in card games.
Although frowned upon in more competitive environments, and specifically
forbidden in select games, table-talk in a typical social gaming situation is
common. The presence of table-talk is complicated, however, when the con-
versations that take place over and above the gaming table are specifically
employed in ways that are intended to shape the outcome of the game. The
term commonly used to describe this activity is kibitzing.
to any player who offers commentary on a player’s move or the game situation
generally. Wei-Hwa Huang suggests four motivations for the kibitzer — those
of instruction, selfishness, altruism and socializing (Vasel et al., 2006). As
Huang notes, it is extremely difficult to discern the motivations of a particular
comment, an observation that frequently leads to the interpretation of kib-
itzing as a manipulative element in the metagame. For some players, table-
talk and kibitzing can be problematic:
Table-talk gets me mad sometimes. If someone sees something that another
player may not and suggests it as an option.... I’d be fine when maybe teach-
ing the game and giving hints to new players, but I do get a bit mad when
experienced players give other experienced players “suggestions”— especially
when they affect my chances of winning [R585].
(Unacceptable behaviors) ... strategizing openly with another player against a
third party (“table-talk”). I specifically don’t like this if the move by a third
player helps the one giving advice, to my detriment. Often if a new player is
making a gross mistake someone may ask the table, “May I give some advice?”
Then the group can either agree or not. Without permission to give strategy
tips, especially from the one who will be harmed, it is unacceptable to give
advice [R308].
For these players, kibitzing disrupts the expectations of autonomy of in-game
decision-making. Yet for others this communicative element is fundamental
to the play of the game:
My group meta-games like crazy. As long as people aren’t annoying when they
do it. We have a good time giving each other “advice” during our games
[R463].
Kibitzing is an integral part of the experience of boardgaming, and is one of
the big reasons I find playing games on the computer unrewarding compared
to face to face play. Bridge is one of the few gaming experiences that specifi-
cally excludes kibitzing; all others nearly require it or the game suffers [Young
in Vasel et al., 2006].
As these comments indicate, players have different expectations regarding
the permissibility of table-talk and kibitzing at the gaming table. Proffering
advice that is intended to benefit the advice-giver rather than the receiver can
have a significant effect on the state of the game. It also represents a disruption
of the autonomy that some players expect from the game experience in the
way that the game shifts from one of independent decision-making to one
where decisions are subject to the influence of in-game communication.
Clearly the social context impinges on the purity of the game world.
In contrast to this position, consider the following player statement:
I might make suggestions as to what my possible strategies could be during a
game, remaining silent about the one I’m REALLY trying to pursue, as to mis-
202 EUROGAMES
This player makes a clear distinction between the game world and the real
world, yet clearly included in the understanding of the game world is a
form of social manipulation that for other players is problematic. Evidently,
some players include in their understandings of game play the banter and
kibitzing that often occurs around the table, while for others the game is
purely an opportunity to match wits, ideally devoid of any manipulative or
persuasive kibitzing. This variability is further highlighted in survey responses
to the question of whether misleading opponents is a legitimate strategy in
games.
In the context of game-related conversation, 57 percent of players sur-
veyed consider deception an inherent part of effective game play, particularly
with regards to player intent. A number of players indicated that this was a
necessary part of game play:
Statements regarding intent should never be taken at face value, as telegraph-
ing your moves transparently is obviously not a winning strategy. In many
abstract games, intent is the only aspect of play that is hidden, and this
requires either complete silence regarding the game or misdirection to achieve
your goals [R161].
Respondents who indicated that this type of play was acceptable typically
referred to bluffing, feinting, distraction and misdirection as tactics that reflect
a degree of gamesmanship. Although perhaps not explicitly encompassed by
the ruleset, it seems they are implicitly a part of the broader gaming encounter
and are often seen as valuable skills:
As long as you don’t lie about the rules or how the game should be played, it
is fine. I respect people that can fool others about their intentions really well
[R140].
Manipulation is a valued asset of life’s tools [R343].
Deception is an important part of gaming. If players take your word so much
that they fail to see that you are working contrary to it, then so be it. They
had their chance. In-game deceptions such as these are different than cheat-
ing, in my opinion [R179].
In contrast to this attitude were the 3 percent of respondents who felt
that misleading other players was entirely inappropriate:
I think it is a way for someone to try to compensate for bad play by sub-
terfuge [R529].
9. An Act Apart? 203
It’s not “cheating,” but I hate people who do that. I tend to just not listen to
what people say, and say nothing myself [R538].
Because I see gaming as a social event, I strongly disprove of lying about your
intentions during a game. The point of gaming is to strengthen friendships,
relationships, etc. [R245].
Of the 38 percent of players who qualified their responses to this ques-
tion, 88 percent indicated that the decision to mislead other players was
dependent upon the game being played. Most of these players indicated that
such misdirection must be explicitly encouraged within the rules of the game,
typically where they involve mechanics of diplomacy or negotiation:
This depends totally on the kind of game and whether it could be considered
within the bounds of the rules. In most games the rules are quite clear about
whether bluff is allowed or not. For the vast majority of games involving mul-
tiple players it is quite clear to me that misleading others about your inten-
tions is a viable strategy [R340].
In games where trading, negotiating and other verbal skills are clearly part of
the game strategy, then I have no issue with it at all. For other games —Puerto
Rico, for example — where bargaining between players would ruin the game
balance in short order, then you shouldn’t be talking about your in-game
intentions at all, let alone lying about them [R456].
Notably, 10 percent of those who offered conditional responses indicated
that the decision to employ such tactics would be dependent upon the other
players in the group. Understandably, reference was occasionally made to the
inappropriateness of misdirection when teaching or when playing with
younger players. Many respondents made reference to the degree of familiarity
with the other players, citing explicit discussions or implicit understandings
that dictate the degree to which such metagaming is allowed and/or appro-
priate:
A lot of this relates to the fact that I play with a regular group, and we’ve
learned about each other’s general psychological approaches, and can therefore
make sensible decisions about claims that other players may make [R587].
If I wanted to play that way, I would discuss it with my group first and make
sure everyone’s on the same page. There are lots of different styles of gaming
interaction that can all work, as long as all the parties involved agree on that
style of play [R355].
The context dependence and the variability of player attitudes towards
this type of play style suggests that players are often involved in gaming
encounters where differing implicit rulesets might be experienced by each
player. Clearly, then, groups who play together over a period of time form
shared understandings concerning the level of metagame play, suggesting that
204 EUROGAMES
although two groups might share a set of explicit rules in the form of the
game itself, the social metagame in each situation, and hence the game being
played, may differ considerably.
One way to highlight the differing understandings of the metagame in
relation to the overall experience of play is to analyze situations where players
are forced into making decisions that might be influenced by the particular
context of play. One such situation is referred to within the hobby as “king-
making.”
Kingmaking
If you’re not in a position to win outright, than you deserve to fall prey to the
metagame.— R665
A cheap, poorly designed way to make the losers feel like they have more to
give the game [R552].
In contrast to these responses were the almost identically sized group of
players who felt that kingmaking is an inherent part of any multiplayer game
and should be factored into play:
Kingmaking is an essential part of gameplay. The psychology and how you
manipulate your opponents is just as important as moving pieces around the
board. I always try to make sure it works in my favour if the last player can
have an influence on who wins [R195].
It is a necessary mechanic that forces players to make political decisions
throughout the game. Without kingmaking a player’s actions have no
metagame consequences. In other words, good and necessary [R344].
The metagame is always part of the game. If the kingmaker hands your oppo-
nent the win, then you obviously did not play the metagame as well as they
did [R133].
If your opponents have allowed you to get into a position late in the game
where you have the opportunity to decide the winner, more power to you! Let
the metagame begin! [R95].
These respondents view kingmaking as a part of the psychological skillset
required to play the game. To them, the ability to read a player and tune play
around that reading is an inherent part of the game. Importantly, many of
the responses were accompanied by a qualification that the decision to elevate
the position of another player should not be motivated by factors external to
the game:
As long as the player deciding does so based on what has happened in the
course of the game, I have no problem with it. If, however, the deciding
player has motives outside the game (such as making their significant other
win), I do have a problem with that and will let them know before any such
decision could be made [R443].
Kingmaking is fine if done within the context of the game (e.g., where it
improves your own final result or where it benefits the player who didn’t
attack you), as these are things which are part of the game (or metagame)
which can be controlled. However, I dislike it where it is done through factors
outside the game (e.g., holding grudges or favouring relationships), as it takes
away the level playing field [R468].
Here again it is clear that players enforce the separation of the game
world from the broader social context. The performance of the “act apart” is
seen as vital to the integrity of the game. Yet players have differing under-
standings of the way that actions performed within a game should be under-
stood. For some, it is appropriate for in-game actions to have consequences
206 EUROGAMES
that remain in the game. For others, in-game actions should not be treated
in the same way as those in the real world. For these players, taking into
account prior actions in the game constitutes inappropriate play. This is seen
most obviously in responses that emphasized a detached rationality should
kingmaking situations arise:
I think they should do the move that is most beneficial to their own position,
and whomever that benefits profits from their planning for that scenario
[R395].
I will make the move which increases my relative position the most. If there is
no such move, then I will “pass” if possible, or make an irrelevant move
[R365].
If you’re at the bottom of the pack you should generally just stick with moves
that seem “reasonable” for your position and hit the folks at the top roughly
equally [R281].
The most important thing for me is to make the decision as impersonal as
possible [R445].
These players choose not to allow prior actions to affect their decision-
making. Instead they are viewing themselves in isolation from other players.
One can discern two general approaches to play here. On the one hand there
are those players who view the interpersonal psychology of competitive play
as being a central element in their understanding of games. For these players
the potential ramifications of targeting other players are a consideration in
their overall approach to play. On the other hand, there is that group of players
who see games from a more abstract and rational perspective. For these players
the emphasis on skilful manipulation of the game system, rather than the psy-
chological interplay, is the principal concern. Is it the case, then, that some
players choose to play the metagame, while others do not?
When a group of players sit down around a table to play a game, the
social metagame begins. The very act of sitting together to engage in com-
petitive play establishes a framework for social interaction that can never be
entirely separated from the play of the game itself. If we sit with children or
inexperienced players, this metagame may manifest in self-handicapping.
9. An Act Apart? 207
With more experienced players we may manipulate, kibitz and plead in ways
that bring the game to life. Alternatively, we may sit in silence and imagine
that this game-above-the-game is not occurring. Nevertheless, as
boardgamegeek member Mscrivner describes, this does nothing to alter the
situation:
Denying the metagame, or refusing to engage in metagaming is in and of
itself a metagame move. One’s emotional or attitudinal preferences may be to
ignore the metagame in favor of the less complex and chaotic (or, if you pre-
fer, the more mathematically harmonious) patterns of the board game, but
that does not mean the metagame ceases to be [2008].
Games such as the ones I have described here take place within a social
microcosm that cannot help but influence the flow of a particular game. Some
players are content to merely observe this metagame. Others seek to harness
it and attempt to shape it through the manipulation of others. As Pulsipher
describes:
[Players] play to enjoy the interaction of the system and the players, to learn
how people think and how they can be persuaded to think in certain ways
[2009b].
The appreciation of how people think and the development of skills to shape
that thinking are at the heart of social board game play. It is this element of
play that players describe when they refer to reading other players, predicting
behavior, and manipulating players through kibitzing, deception, and even
“tactical whining.” It is a game that players of board games are never not
playing.
Where difficulties arise is when players have conflicting ideas as to what
constitutes psychological play and what constitutes unfair leverage of the social
metagame. This is because game rules do not typically describe the psycho-
logical skills required to play. A good example of this is the card game Poker.
Despite the centrality of the bluff to the effective play of the game, there is
no reference to bluffing in the official rules of Poker (Ciaffone, 2004). While
this may seem a trivial observation, it might serve to imagine a group of
players who have no experience of the game. To these players, the potential
for bluffing is not immediately obvious. The game proceeds with players
attempting to estimate the worth of their cards based upon probabilities. Yet
Poker is a game predicated on the possibility of bluffing. Should this type of
play emerge, it would be subject to the social norms established by the group.
In fact, it is entirely possible that the act of bluffing may be dismissed as
“against the spirit of the game.”
Though the patterns of board games may appear complex, they are crude
and predictable when compared with the patterns of behaviors exhibited by
208 EUROGAMES
players. For some players it may be the mastery of game patterns that holds
their attention, where for others it may be the mastery of other players through
observation and psychological play. This research has identified that both
social interaction and intellectual stimulation are the most significant con-
tributors to player enjoyment of eurogames. Significantly, the framework for
intellectual stimulation is explicitly described by the rules of the game. The
framework for psychological play is not.
The fact that the implicit rules governing psychological play are never
codified means that players bring their own expectations to the game. In order
for the game to progress smoothly, these expectations must be managed within
the broader framework of the gaming encounter. It is the structure that
emerges from this process of negotiation that forms the game, as the nature
of each game is largely dependent on the social context in which it occurs. As
Garfield observes, “a particular game, played with the exact same rules will
mean different things to different people” (2000, p. 16).
A board game is not a vacuum; it happens in real life with real people.—
R259
In society ... play phenomena are rarely met in prototypical occurrences: they
are usually mixed up with different behavioural patterns, involved in many
processes at once, and embedded in larger social dynamics. As a result, social
definition of play activities requires a certain degree of variation, in which
different kinds of play activity, with different social meaning, are taken into
account.— Paglieri, 2003a
In this book I have analyzed a particular form of game and the way that
the play of such games is performed, experienced and understood by a very
specific group of people. In adopting this approach to the study of social play,
I have been guided by a simple assumption — that social play cannot be under-
stood without taking into account the broader cultural and sociological context
in which it occurs. For this reason I have drawn on an eclectic range of dis-
ciplines. History, ludology, cultural and subcultural studies, leisure studies
and play theory have all contributed to the picture I have painted of social
play. While this book does not allow an in-depth exploration of any of these
areas, I believe that such a multidisciplinary approach is fundamental in the
study of social play and games. There can be no understanding of adult social
play without this broader context.
Consequently, from a ludo-historical perspective, I have examined the
way that hobby games emerged from the serious practice of war simulation
to become a form of recreation for a small, highly educated, predominantly
male group in society. From the communities that formed around the hobby,
the tendency to experiment with rules led directly to the birth of role-playing
games, a revolutionary manifestation of social play whose impact is still felt
in the tropes of video games today. As hobby gaming grew, so too did the
strong sense of community that inevitably accompanies a shared interest
among a minority group. Although the emergence of computer games had a
significant impact on hobby gaming, the popularity of collectible card games
in the 1990s re-affirmed the attraction of engaging in intellectually challenging
social play that was arguably lacking in the video games of that era. Hobby
gaming survived.
Throughout this period the growth of the hobby industry provided
210
9. An Act Apart? 211
opportunities to experiment with the form of board and table game in ways
that ran counter to the prevalent “one size fits all” approach of mainstream
games manufacturers. The niche occupied by hobby gaming allowed for the
development of innovative approaches to game design that in turn led to new
mechanics and conceptions of what a board game could be. Meanwhile, in
Germany, designers subject to particular cultural and commercial influences
began to evolve a design aesthetic that reflected the increasing sophistication
of hobby game designs yet was conceived specifically to facilitate social play
among families. As this aesthetic evolved, designers in Germany were forced
to reconsider some of the central tenets of game design in order to create
games that eschewed direct conflict in favor of family-oriented themes and
mechanics.
The design style that materialized from this prolific period of creativity
manifested in a genre of game that has come to be known as the eurogame.
These games are characterized by accessible themes, simple rules, constrained
playing times and a strong emphasis on comparative performance through
non-confrontational interaction. In terms of mechanics, this is achieved
through a focus on personal achievement over direct conflict that tends to
lead to asymmetric goal formation through the process of play. At the same
time, the thematic goals that are assigned to players in eurogames are also
typically infused with personal achievement rather than domination or sub-
jugation. In addition, the loose connection between player roles and the actual
mechanics of the game diminishes the need for aggressive role-playing and
the possibilities for in-game actions to spill out into the “real world.” Taken
together, these traits of eurogames lend themselves to a form of convivial
social play, with the game acting primarily as a framework for intellectual
challenge and social interaction rather than an opportunity for valorization.
With such a strong emphasis on simple rulesets and innovative mechan-
ics, hobby gamers eagerly embraced the games that were emerging from Ger-
many at this time. That the themes and constrained playing times made them
more accessible, particularly to older gamers and their peers, only served to
enhance the appeal. Small groups of enthusiasts, firstly in the U.K. and later
in the U.S., increasingly sought out these games as an alternative to the com-
plex simulation-driven designs that were typical of Anglo-American hobby
board games. The explosive growth of the Internet during the late 1990s fur-
ther accelerated the word-of-mouth interest that eurogames inspired. Before
long, hobbyist publishers in the U.S. emerged to meet the growing demand
for the genre, and designers worldwide were increasingly influenced by the
eurogame aesthetic. By the early 2000s the eurogame had become a staple of
hobby gaming.
The emphasis on games as a social and intellectual activity, rather than
212 EUROGAMES
an opportunity for valorization, made eurogames the perfect match for hobby
gamers precisely because hobby game play has always been centrally concerned
with process, rather than outcome. Wargames have always been primarily an
opportunity to play with history, to see how particular decisions shape the
outcome of events, to experience that process. This emphasis on process over
outcome is reflected in Matthew Kirschenbaum’s observations of the wargam-
ing hobby:
I see a contemporary player and design community (both hobbyist and profes-
sional) that values attention to process in the procedural or quantitative repre-
sentation of complex, often literally contested phenomena.... I see a focus on
the in-game experience, and the after the fact analysis and discussion of what
happened and why Kirshenbaum, 2011].
In role-playing games, which typically eschew the notion of winners and losers
entirely, the emphasis on collaboration leads Fine to suggest that “enjoying
the fantasy ... overrides other considerations” (1983, p. 233). Finally, although
collectible card games are built around a directly competitive model, they
arguably proved popular due to the engaging metagame of deck-building,
which gave hobbyists the opportunity to experiment with the process of game
design on a small scale.1 Even when competition does drive player motivation,
as Lenarcic and Scollay observe, “social aspects of play itself transcend the
mechanics of any particular game” (2005, p. 71).
The play of tabletop games is a complex social activity. Unlike
videogames, where “virtual gamers are hidden away in their warrens, logging-
on to their server of choice” (Lenarcic and Mackay-Scolley, 2005, p. 71), man-
agement of the immediate social setting in tabletop games adds a meta-level
of understanding that cannot help but inform the process of play. The social
context of the game can indeed shape play in a variety of ways, since players
are always mindful of the social environment in which a game encounter takes
place. Goal-orientedness, the perception of fairness, the potential for in-game
emotions to spill outside of the game, the norms of appropriate play and the
leverage of the metagame — all of these factors impact on the process and
experience of play. More significantly, the negotiation of these elements is not
merely a by-product of play but an essential aspect of the process. That
eurogames are strategy games belies the observation that what they are largely
about is the social structures they create.
The connection I make here between the play of strategy games and
wider understandings of social behavior is not a new one. Most famously, in
1959 anthropologists Roberts, Arth and Bush identified an “association
between games of strategy and complexity of social organization” in reviewing
the role of games in culture (1959b, p. 610). Huizinga explicitly privileged
9. An Act Apart? 213
group forms of play as those most closely linked to the formation of culture,
describing play, and specifically contests, as “civilising functions” operating
in the realm of ritual (1950, p. 47). As Goffman argues, it is through these
forms of ritual that individuals become social beings:
One must look ... to the fact that societies everywhere, if they are to be soci-
eties, must mobilize their members as self-regulating participants in social
encounters. One way of mobilizing the individual for this purpose is through
ritual.... The general capacity to be bound by moral rules may well belong to
the individual, but the particular set of rules which transforms him into a
human being derives from the requirements established in the ritual organiza-
tion of social encounters [1967, pp. 44–45].
The people who truly fall head over heels for the hobby are the people who
forget about the results of a game as soon as it’s over. They might ponder
what they could have done differently to improve their score, not because
they’re bitter or upset, but rather because they want to continue exploring the
breadth and depth of the rules framework [2009].
217
218 NOTES — CHAPTER 1
3. Arguably, it is unfair to dismiss Hasbro in forty years, Wells’ rules, along with those of
this way given the constraints of the U.S. mass- Naval historian Fletcher Pratt (1943), consti-
market, particularly in terms of game complexity tuted the only form of recreational wargaming
and the need to sell significant numbers of games (Freeman, 1980, p. 14).
in order to justify mass production. 10. This was largely due to the efforts of Jack
4. For example, the “Hearts family,” “Whist/ Scruby in the U.S. who developed a method for
Bridge family” and “Rummy games.” Arnold producing figures from rubber moulds, and Don
Marks uses a similar categorization method in his Featherstone in the U.K. The pair worked to-
book on the topic of card games (Marks, 1995). gether on the early newsletter War Game Digest
5. Interestingly, Stam makes a similar point (Beattie, n.d.; Gray, 2008).
with regard to film when he says, “Subject mat- 11. For example, Gettysburg (Roberts, 1958a),
ter is the weakest criterion for generic grouping Waterloo (Shaw and Schutz, 1962), D-Day
because it fails to take into account how the sub- (Roberts, 1961).
ject is treated” (2000, p. 14). 12. Originally an amateur fanzine produced
6. For example, while Wolf describes “Shoot by U.S. serviceman Chris Wagner, Strateg y &
’Em Up” and “Dodging” games by the principal Tactics helped to cement the community that
player interaction, other examples include was gathering around the hobby by soliciting
“Sports” (theme), “Escape” (goal) and “Card the opinions of players regarding the types of
Games” (medium of origin) (2002, p. 117). games they wished to see produced, and by ac-
7. For example, Warhammer 40,000 Collectible tive discussion of products other than those of-
Card Game (Peterschmidt and Miller, 2001), War- fered by SPI (Costikyan, 1996).
lord: Saga of the Storm (Williams, 2001). 13. Although Costikyan’s claim is somewhat
8. The beginnings of this activity can be traced outdated, it is unlikely, especially given the de-
to 1780 and the development of a war game by cline of the wargaming hobby, that any title has
Helwig, Master of the Pages for the Duke of surpassed the sales of Squad Leader.
Brunswick. The game, which was played out on 14. Avalon Hill also grew their product line
a table of 1666 squares, featured differing abilities through the acquisition of companies such as
for units, terrain effects and early rules for Sports Illustrated Games, 3M Games and Bat-
fortresses and entrenchment (Sutton-Smith and tleline, whose successful titles Wooden Ships and
Avedon, 1971b, p. 273; Freeman, 1980). At the Iron Men (Taylor, 1975) and the Diplomacy-in-
same time, there is evidence that civilians had spired Machiavelli (Taylor and Wood, 1977) were
taken to modifying the rules of existing games, brought into the company’s product line. Im-
such as Chess and Draughts, to better simulate con- portantly, the company also purchased the rights
temporary warfare (Dunnigan, 1997). The first to Diplomacy and gave the game widespread dis-
modern military usage of games is usually attrib- tribution.
uted to the Prussian army in the early 19th century 15. For example, Terrible Swift Sword (Berg,
(Freeman, 1980; Dunnigan, 1997; Jones, 1998). 1976) and Sniper! (Dunnigan, 1973).
Dissatisfied with current forms of training, the 16. Broadsides and Boarding Parties was an
Prussians (and, later, the re-unified Germans) uti- elaborately produced version of Harris’ game,
lized games as models for strategic thinking. These originally released as a paper and chit wargame
early games implemented terrain effects and even by Citadel Game Systems in 1981.
more realistic military maps, and were notable for 17. Known as the Gamemaster series, the line
the inclusion of the effects of military intelligence. was made up of Axis and Allies (Harris, 1981),
In some games the presence of an umpire meant Broadsides and Boarding Parties, Conquest of the
that players were not necessarily able to know the Empire (Harris, 1984), Fortress America (Gray,
position or exact aims of their adversary. The neu- 1986a) and Shogun (Gray, 1986b), later renamed
tral umpire held such information and revealed Samurai Swords.
only what was logically “knowable” to the com- 18. For example, TSR’s Onslaught (Niles, 1987)
mander of the force. This group of games, known and the book/film-related The Hunt for Red Oc-
as Kriegspiel, were divided by the emergence of tober (Niles, 1988), GDW’s Battle for Moscow
“free” Kriegspiel, in which an umpire suitably (Chadwick, 1986), and Avalon Hill’s Platoon (Tay-
versed in the art of warfare made critical judg- lor, 1986) and Gettysburg (Taylor, 1988).
ments over success and failure—as opposed to the 19. The story of the series of events that led
“rigid” Kriegspiel in which all judgments were rig- up to the “invention” of Dungeons & Dragons is
orously decided by a complex set of tables. a complex one involving many players, each with
9. In 1913, science fiction writer H. G. Wells their own interpretation and recollection of
published Little Wars (1913). The book, which events. More detailed descriptions of the origins
detailed a ruleset for playing wargames with lead of the game can be found in Fine, 1983; Mason,
miniatures, can be considered the precursor to 2004; and Mona, 2007.
modern miniatures wargaming. For just over 20. The game was turned down by a number
Notes — Chapter 2 219
of game companies, and the first 1000 copies 1992), Mage: The Ascension (Wieck et al., 1993),
produced by Gygax’s own company, Tactical Wraith: The Oblivion (Rein-Hagen et al., 1994),
Studies Rules (TSR), would take 11 months to Changeling: The Dreaming (Rein-Hagen et al.,
sell (Fine, 1983, p. 15). 1995), Hunter: The Reckoning (Rein-Hagen et
21. Among the first of these were Tunnels and al., 1999), Mummy: The Resurrection (Achilli et
Trolls (Andre, 1975), a simpler game notable for al., 2001) and Demon: The Fallen (Stolze and
the inclusion of solo rules; Chaosium’s Runequest Tinworth, 2002).
(Perrin et al., 1978), another fantasy offering that 26. Live action role-playing games (LARPs)
described an elaborate pseudo–bronze age world are a form of role-playing that, as the name sug-
and was the first to incorporate a system of char- gests, take play away from the tabletop environ-
acter skills ( Jaquays, 2007); and Marc Miller’s ment to a larger theatrical scale.
Traveller (Miller, 1977), a science fictional take 27. “Gamism is expressed by competition
on the genre that famously described an elabo- among participants (the real people); it includes
rate fictional universe, the Third Imperium, victory and loss conditions for characters, both
with a history stretching over hundreds of thou- short-term and long-term, that reflect on the
sand of years (Pondsmith, 2007). people’s actual play strategies. The listed ele-
22. TSR expanded their range to include ments provide an arena for the competition”
post-apocalyptic ( Jaquet and Ward, 1978), west- (Edwards, 2001).
ern (Gygax and Blume, 1975) and spy thriller 28. Among those games that continue to
settings (Rasmussen, 1980), with other compa- demonstrate innovation in the independent role-
nies soon following suit in the search for new playing genre are Dust Devils (Snyder, 2002), a
material. Superheroes received the role-playing spaghetti-western RPG which incorporates an
treatment in the 1980s with both Hero Games’ innovative poker mechanic for event resolution;
Champions (MacDonald et al., 1981) and TSR’s My Life with Master (Czege, 2003), a comedic
own Marvel Super Heroes (Grubb, 1984). Cham- take on the gothic horror genre which sees play-
pions was among the first role-playing games to ers taking the role of servants to an evil master;
use a balanced points system to establish char- and Donjon (Nixon, 2002), an interesting at-
acter traits (earlier games had relied on random tempt to revisit early fantasy role-playing games
die rolls) (Bridges, 2007), while Marvel Super while further empowering players to create the
Heroes took the opposite approach in supplying game in conjunction with the game master.
characters with wildly imbalanced attributes that 29. The game was published by Wizards of
were intended to mirror the fictional realities of the Coast in 1994 (Garfield, 1994).
the Marvel comic universe (Kenson, 2007). 30. Renamed Vampire: The Eternal Struggle
Horror-themed games quickly appeared, the in 1995.
most successful of which was Chaosium’s Call of 31. Derived from the gameworld of the RPG
Cthulhu (Peterson, 1981). Based upon the mythos game Feng Shui (Laws, 1996).
of H. P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu saw the fa- 32. For example, Netrunner (Garfield, 1996),
miliar notion of gradual character development Deadlands: Doomtown (Williams, 1998), adapted
replaced by a slow descent into insanity. from the Deadlands RPG (Hensley, 1996), and
23. The flexibility of role-playing was amply Legend of the Burning Sands (Williams and Lau,
demonstrated by games such as Paranoia 1998), set in the same fictional universe as Legend
(Costikyan et al., 1984), a darkly humorous take of the Five Rings.
on a dystopian computer-controlled society that 33. For example, Highlander TCG (Sager,
often pitted players against each other through 1996), James Bond 007 GoldenEye (Winter,
hidden agendas, and Toon (Costikyan and Spec- 1995), X-Files (Macdonell and Kent, 1996) and
tor, 1984), simultaneously a comedic attempt to Xena: Warrior Princess CCG (1998).
mirror the lunacy of cartoons and a subtle jibe
at the seriousness of the role-playing genre.
24. Lion Rampant’s Ars Magica (Tweet and Chapter 2
Rein-Hagen, 1987) is indicative of this evolu-
tion, as players take turns in the role of game 1. Interestingly, this was not the first time
master (story guide) and switch between char- that a bookshelf design had been utilized for
acters (each player initially creates three charac- games. McLoughlin Brothers had adopted a
ters) as the story progresses. Erick Wujcik pushed similar design style for a range of games as early
this emphasis still further in the introduction of as 1875 (Whitehill, 1992, p. 165).
Amber Diceless (1991), a game set in the universe 2. The full list of 3M’s Bookshelf series
of Roger Zelazny’s series of science fiction books, comprises the independently designed Acquire
The Chronicles of Amber, which, as the title sug- (Sackson, 1962), Bazaar (Sackson, 1967), Break-
gests, dispensed with the use of dice completely. thru (Randolph, 1965), Challenge Football (Her-
25. Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Rein-Hagen, schler, 1972a), Challenge Golf at Pebble Beach
220 NOTES — CHAPTER 2
(Herschler, 1972b), Contigo (Thibault, 1974), Carter Warlord of Mars (Herman and Goldberg,
Events (1974), Executive Decision (Sackson, 1971), 1979), Wreck of the B.S.M. Pandora (Dunnigan,
Facts in Five (Onanien, 1967), Feudal (Buestch- 1980b), The Sword and the Stars (Smith, 1981), The
ler, 1967), Foil (Herschler, 1968), High Bid Return of the Stainless Steel Rat (Costikyan and Si-
(Winters and Winters, 1962), Image (Szwarce, monsen, 1981), and Star Trader (Simonsen, 1982).
1973), Jumpin (1964), Mr. President (Carmichael, Many more games were published in SPI’s dedi-
1967), Oh-Wah-Ree (a mancala variant) (Ran- cated science fiction and fantasy gaming magazine
dolph, 1962), Phlounder (Bernett, 1962), Ploy Ares.
(Thibault, 1970), Point of Law (Lipman, 1972), 12. War of the Ring (Berg and Barasch, 1977),
Quinto (1964), Stocks and Bonds (1964) and Gondor (Berg, 1977) and Sauron (Mosca, 1977)
Twixt (Randolph, 1961), along with versions of 13. The complete line of Metagaming’s Mi-
Backgammon, Challenge Bridge (a Bridge variant), crogame line comprised Ogre ( Jackson, 1977b),
Chess and Go, and the unreleased Jati (Havens, Chitin I (Thompson, 1977a), Melee ( Jackson,
1965) and Mad Mate (Randolph, 1972). 1977a), Warp War (Thompson, 1977b), Rivets
3. After living in Japan for a short period, (Taylor, 1977), Wizard (Jackson, 1978b), Olympica
Randolph moved to Venice, where, along with de- (Willis, 1978), G.E.V. ( Jackson, 1978a), Ice War
signers Leo Colovini and Dario de Toffoli, he es- (Gross, 1978), Black Hole (Taylor, 1978), Sticks
tablished the publisher Venice Connections in and Stones (Ray, 1978), Invasion of the Air-Eaters
1995. Over the course of his life Randolph would (Gross, 1979), Holy War (Willis, 1979), Annihi-
design a number of Spiel des Jahres contenders be- lator and One World (Armintrout, 1980), Hot
fore his death in 2004. An active member of the Spot (Armintrout, 1979), Artifact (Williams,
game design community, Sackson too had a sig- 1980), Dimension Demons (Askew, 1981), The
nificant number of games short listed for the Spiel Lords of Underearth (Gross, 1981), Helltank (Kos-
des Jahres and is also reputed to have accumulated nett, 1981), Trailblazer (Costikyan, 1981), Star-
the largest private collection of games in the world leader: Assault! (Thompson, 1982), and Helltank
before his death in 2002. Along with his design Destroyer (Kosnett, 1982).
work, Sackson wrote a short column for Strategy 14. Jackson’s Car Wars ( Jackson and Irby,
& Tactics magazine, discussing non-wargames in 1981), which takes its thematic cue from movies
the 1970s, and authored A Gamut of Games (1969), such as Deathrace 2000 and Mad Max, is a no-
a compendium of rules for abstract games, some table microgame that spawned a number of suc-
of which were later published as boxed games. cessful expansions and being eventually re-re-
4. Klaus Teuber and Wolfgang Kramer, leased as a boxed game.
among others, list Sackson as being influential 15. Interestingly, Cosmic Encounter was orig-
in their work (“Interview with Klaus Teuber,” inally licensed by Parker Brothers, but after ne-
2005; Vasel, 2005a). gotiations fell through, the Eon team self-pub-
5. The majority of the information con- lished the game (Vasel, 2005b).
tained in this section discussing the early years 16. For example, Bruno Faidutti: “Cosmic En-
of the gaming hobby in the U.K. was provided counter would later impact my own game designs
in a series of interviews with gaming writer Stu- the most profoundly” (2007); Richard Garfield:
art Dagger, to whom I am exceedingly grateful. “Though there are about a dozen games that have
6. Later republished by Parker Brothers in directly influenced Magic in one way or another,
Germany as Ultra. the game’s most influential ancestor is a game
7. Published by Milton Bradley, among oth- for which I have no end of respect: Cosmic En-
ers, as Conspiracy. counter” (as cited in Mulligan, 2002); and Steve
8. Ariel began life as a small division of Jackson, on the design of Illuminati (1983): “I’m
Philmar Ltd., a card game manufacturer who a great admirer of Eon’s Cosmic Encounter. I de-
expanded into board games during the 1960s cided to go for the same free-wheeling, back-
(Bloomfield, 2005). stabbing play style. Another similarity to CE
9. Strangely enough, the success of this ar- was the idea that each player would have his own
guably mediocre game is attributed to its inclu- special power” ( Jackson, n.d.).
sion in the first versions of Gygax and Arneson’s 17. West End Games in 1986, Mayfair Games
Dungeons and Dragons. In the booklet describing in 1991, and Avalon Hill in 2000. Fantasy Flight
wilderness encounters, the authors assume that Games re-issued the game in late 2008.
players have access to Dunnigan’s game (Gygax 18. Strangely enough, Sid Meier, developer of
and Arneson, 1974b). the original Civilization computer game (1991),
10. Part of a trilogy that also included Outreach has claimed that he had not played Tresham’s de-
(Hardy, 1976) and Starsoldier (Walczyk, 1977). sign, yet Bruce Shelley, Meier’s co-designer at Mi-
11. Other SPI Science Fiction–themed games croprose, was an ex–Avalon Hill employee who
during this period include Battle Fleet Mars (Si- had worked on the localization of Tresham’s 1829
monsen, 1977), Titan Strike (Kosnett, 1979), John for the company and played Civilization fre-
Notes — Chapter 3 221
quently (Edwards, 2007). Following a string of 31. “Beer and pretzel” is a term commonly
successful sequels to the computer game, in 2002 used to describe games that feature a large
Eagle Games published Sid Maier’s Civilization: amount of randomness and a light theme.
The Board Game (Drover, 2002), an adaptation 32. Arkham Horror was redesigned and re-
of Civilization III (Briggs and Johnson, 2001). In leased by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005 (Wilson,
2010, Fantasy Flight Games published an entirely 2005).
different game by the same name (Wilson, 2010),
adapted from Civilization V (Schafer, 2010).
19. The game upon which Dover Patrol was Chapter 3
based was L’Attaque, designed by Frenchwoman
Hermance Edan (1909). 1. Memory has subsequently sold approxi-
20. Among the games that have re-imple- mately 50 million copies (Hanson, 2006, p. 45).
mented Pulsipher’s design in different historical 2. In 2010 Spielbox began simultaneous
contexts are Maharaja (Sandercock and Martin, publication in English.
1994), Charles Vasey’s Chariot Lords (1999) 3. Tepper estimates that a Spiel des Jahres–
and the more recent The Dragon and the Pearl winning game can expect to sell between 300,000
(Richardson, 2004). to 500,000 copies (2007), though some have
21. Dungeon! was later published by Parker easily surpassed this figure (e.g., Carcassonne, Die
Brothers, among others, and was revised to fa- Siedler von Catan).
cilitate more cooperative play in 1989 and 1992 4. Strangely, in a more recent interview, Wer-
as The New Dungeon! and The Classic Dungeon! neck has suggested that this “pressure on the game
respectively. industry” was largely incidental: “The originators
22. Notably, the 2007 re-implementation of Spiel des Jahres were — and still are — game
adds several additional mechanisms and shortens critics. We are responsible to our ‘customers’
the game significantly. Changes were con- which are the readers of our columns. There is
tributed by European designers Bruno Faidutti no responsibility to either trade or industry. So
and Pierre Clequin, and Fantasy Flight’s Corey our aim was to focus on good games. The fact
Konieczka (Carver, 2006; Dagger, 2006a). that trade or industry would benefit from our de-
23. Or Blood Royal— Carver insists the extra cision was willingly tolerated, since we know that
“e” is incorrect! (Carver, 2008) companies can only invest in better products if
24. Talisman Expansion Set (Harris, 1986), they had earned money before” (Yu, 2011a).
Talisman: The Adventure (Merrett et al., 1986), 5. This was awarded in 2001 to Reiner
Talisman Dungeon (Harris, 1987), Talisman Knizia’s Der Herr der Ringe (2000a), a coopera-
Timescape (Bourque, 1988), Talisman City (Mor- tive game based upon Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
row and Friedman, 1989) and Talisman Dragons 6. The International Gamers Awards were
(Morrow and Friedman, 1993). established in the U.S. in 2000 “to recognize out-
25. For example, British Rails (Henninger et standing games and designers, as well as the com-
al., 1984), Mexican Rails (1989), North American panies that publish them” (Schloesser, 2008b).
Rails (1992), Eurorails (Bromley, 1990), Nippon 7. Originally established in 1974 as the
Rails (1992), Australian Rails (Roznai, 1994), Charles S. Roberts Awards, the U.S.–based Ori-
India Rails (Fawcett, 1999), Iron Dragon (Brom- gins Awards are voted upon by members of the
ley and Wham, 1996), Lunar Rails (Stribula, Academy of Adventure Gaming, Arts and De-
2003), Russian Rails (Soares, 2004), and China sign, and announced at the annual Origins
Rails (Dreiling, 2007). Game Fair. In 1987 the awards were separated,
26. Reworked for the U.S. market as 1830: with the Charles S. Roberts award now inde-
The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons (Tre- pendently awarded at the World Boardgaming
sham, 1986). Championships (formerly Avaloncon) (“Acad-
27. Originally published by the Swiss com- emy of Adventure Gaming,” 2008).
pany Fata Morgana. 8. The Spiel des Jahres jury has acknowl-
28. Avalon Hill acquired the rights to Battle- edged more complex games with the Sonderpreis
line’s Circus Maximus upon taking over the com- Komplexes Spiel and, more recently, with the Ken-
pany. The game was subsequently reworked and nerspiel des Jahres.
split into two games —Gladiator (Matheny, 1981), 9. As well as an overall prize, the Spiel der
which focused upon arena combat, and Circus Spiele recommends games for families, games for
Maximus, a race game. friends, games for children, games for everyone,
29. Famously, the rules include a section on games for two and games for experts (“Spielen
sanctioned rule-breaking. in Österreich,” 2008).
30. Designer John Wick has compared this 10. Although, as previously noted, this prac-
element of the game to Magic: The Gathering tice had also been common in wargames.
(2007). 11. So called because the initial proclamation
222 NOTES — CHAPTER 4
was signed on the back of a beer coaster. Initi- Games International in both a print and online
ated by Reinhold Wittig, the thirteen signatories format, but publication ceased again in 2006.
were Wittig, Helge Andersen, Hajo Bücken, 7. Moon published three games in Germany
Erwin Glonegger, Dirk Hanneforth, Max Kob- in 1990: Wer Hat Mehr? (1990c), later reprinted
bert, Wolfgang Kramer, Joe Nikisch, Gilbert as Where’s Bob’s Hat?; Gespenster (1990b), a re-
Obermeier, Alex Randolph, John Rüttinger, release of the game Black Spy (1981), which Moon
Roland Siegers and an as yet unidentified de- had designed while at Avalon Hill; and Airlines
signer (“Game Designers — A Plea,” 2010). (1990a), a reimplementation of which, Union
12. It is a testimony to Wittig’s combination Pacific (1999), would be nominated for the Spiel
of these two pursuits that he has won no less des Jahres in 1999.
than five Sonderpreis “Schönes Spiel” for, chrono- 8. Re-issued by Milton Bradley as Daytona
logically, Das Spiel (1980), a game comprising 500, Quandary, Bandu and Dragon Tales Match-
281 dice in a pyramid formation, Wir füttern die ing Game, respectively.
kleinen Nilpferde (1983), a children’s game, 9. Reprinted by Avalon Hill in the U.S. as
Müller & Sohn (1986), a two player roll and Adel Verpflichtet (subtitled “The Great Bluffing
move game themed around mill construction, Game from Germany”) and, later, as By Hook or
Kula Kula (1993), a nautical set collection game Crook (1990b); in the U.K. by Gibsons Games
that utilizes sea shells and wooden boats, and as Fair Means or Foul (1990c); and by Überplay
the beautiful abstract Doctor Faust (1994). worldwide in 2004 as Hoity Toity.
13. Interestingly, “Game Designer’s Associa- 10. Interestingly, 6-Tage Rennen was not pro-
tion” is the translation offered up for interna- duced by a dedicated games company but by a
tional members. group promoting cycling, Holtmann VIP.
14. Originally entitled Rafting. 11. Vasey was co-author of the popular war
15. Originally entitled Das Spiel der Weinberge. game review magazine Perfidious Albion. Far-
16. Münchner Spielwies’n (2008). quhar would later become a playtester for Reiner
17. Spielefest (2008). Knizia and contribute substantially to Der Herr
18. Wargames. der Ringe and Blue Moon, Knizia’s expandable
19. It is interesting to note that this aversion card game (2004c), among other titles.
to violence also applies to video games, where 12. Breese is the designer and publisher of
Germany is described as having “the most strin- Reef Encounter (2004) and the successful “Key”
gent anti-violence laws” in Europe (Thayer and series of games in the European mold, Keywood
Kolko, 2004, p. 486). (1995), Keydom (1998), Keytown (2000), Keythe-
20. Thornquist is here referring to the Essen dral (2002) and Keyharvest (2007).
Games Fair, discussed later in this chapter. 13. Bob Scherer-Hoock (Scherer-Hoock,
21. Game Manufacturer’s Association. 2003) notes that among the games played at the
22. In 2010 the collection of the Deutches event were : Ausbrecher (Bücken, 1988), Cash
Spiele-Archiv was purchased by the city of (Kramer and Grunau, 1990), Civilization, Die
Nuremberg (Helldörfer, 2010). Macher, Drachenlachen (Wittig, 1984), Favoriten
(Müller, 1989), Hare & Tortoise, Haithabu (Ross,
1975), Homas Tour (Bontenbal, 1979), Jump the
Chapter 4 Queue (1989), Karawane (Bartl et al., 1990), Kar-
riere Poker (1988), McMulti, Niki Lauda’s Formel
1. For example, Kosmos (previously Franckh 1, Ogallala (Hoffmann, 1975), Railway Rivals,
Spiele-Galerie), an imprint of Franckh-Kosmos Sahara (Bücken, 1990), Traber Derby (Urack,
Verlags-GmbH & Co.; and Goldsieber, an im- 1989), Up the River (Ludwig, 1988), Wildlife Ad-
print of Simba Toys, formed in 1995, venture and Adel Verpflichtet.
2. For example, Amigo Spiel (1980), Queen 14. A problematic issue with the submission
Games (1992), Drei Magier Spiele (1994), and of game designs is that companies will often re-
Adlung-Spiuele (1990). fuse to view unpublished prototypes lest they
3. Originally commissioned by a German make themselves vulnerable to later claims of
road haulage company (Walker, 1989). copyright infringement.
4. Between these two Spiel des Jahres–win- 15. Junior Labyrinth (Kobbert, 1995),
ning games, Kramer and his wife Ursula also de- Labyrinth der Ringe (Kobbert, 1998), Labyrinth:
signed the highly regarded Wildlife Adventure Das Kartenspiel (Kobbert, 2000), 3D Labyrinth
(1985), a reworking of which, Expedition (Kramer, (Kobbert, 2002), Lord of the Rings Labyrinth
1996b), would be nominated for the award in (Kobbert, 2003), Labyrinth — Die Schatzjagd
1996. (Baars, 2005) and Master Labyrinth (Kobbert,
5. The General was Avalon Hill’s in-house 2007).
magazine. 16. A re-release of the earlier Homas Tour
6. In 2004 Walker temporarily revived (Bontenbal, 1979).
Notes — Chapter 5 223
17. A degree of confusion surrounds the ori- ter (Wrede, 2003a), Carcassonne — Burgfräulein
gins of Borg’s game. Originally titled Liars Dice und Drache (Wrede, 2005), Carcassonne — Der
and published by Milton Bradley in 1987, the Turm (Wrede, 2006), Carcassonne — Abtei und
game is similar to the public domain game known Bürgermeister (Wrede, 2007b), Carcassonne —
as Dudo or Perudo. Graf, König und Konsorten (Wrede, 2008).
18. Originally published by the German com- 37. Carcassonne: Neues Land (Wrede and
pany Moskito. Colovini, 2005), Carcassonne: Die Burg (Wrede
19. Falco, 1991. and Knizia, 2003).
20. Eventually Mike Siggins would con- 38. For example, designers such as Martin
tribute to the site in a deal which allowed Tid- Wallace and Richard Breese (U.K.), Bruno
well to transcribe the majority of Sumo’s back Faidutti (France), Leo Colovini (Italy) and
issues onto The Game Cabinet (Tidwell, 2008). Philippe Keyaerts (Belgium).
21. The English translation of Die Siedler von 39. South Korea has a particularly active
Catan is The Settlers of Catan. board game community.
22. Dott was the president of Avalon Hill at 40. Ticket to Ride: Europe (Moon, 2005),
the time. Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition (Moon, 2006),
23. 1835 was a German take on Tresham’s Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries (Moon, 2007a)
railroad designs. Ticket to Ride: The Card Game (Moon, 2008a)
24. Reprinted as Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix. and Ticket to Ride: The Dice Game (Moon, 2008c).
25. Reprinted as Streetcar. 41. Ticket to Ride: Mystery Train Expansion
26. Interestingly, Entdecker was a part of a (Moon, 2004b), Ticket to Ride: Switzerland
larger game that Teuber had presented to Kos- (Moon, 2007b) and Ticket to Ride: The Dice Ex-
mos. The publisher was reluctant to produce pansion (Moon, 2008b).
such an expansive design, encouraging Teuber 42. A re-working of Michael Schacht’s Kar-
to break up the game into its constituent parts. dinal & König (2000).
Entdecker was the result of the first explorative 43. A subsidiary of Überplay, Inspiration
portion of the game, while Die Siedler von Catan Games, published religious-themed variations
came from the development-focused endgame on popular games, such as The Settlers of Zara-
(“Interview with Klaus Teuber,” 2005). hemla (Teuber, 2003) and The Ark of the Covenant
27. Re-issued (updated) in 2007 as El Capi- (Wrede, 2003b), re-workings of Die Siedler von
tan (Rösner and Kramer, 2007). Catan and Carcassonne, respectively.
28. Clifford, 2000. 44. For example, Primordial Soup (originally
29. Tummelson discusses this decision in an published as Ursuppe (Matthäus and Nestel,
interview with Stephen Glenn: 1997), Santiago (Hely & Pelek, 2003) and Il
The Bromley family decided to leave Mayfair Principe (Ornella, 2005).
and tried to sell it. I really thought that there 45. For example, Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean
was a market — or should be — for the German (Parks and Hawkins, 2005), Pandemic (Leacock,
style games in the U.S. so I decided to create my 2008) and Wasabi (Gertzbein and Cappel, 2008).
own company to do it. The first step was to try 46. For example, Twilight Imperium 3rd Edi-
to buy Mayfair, but the family wanted too much tion (Petersen, 2005), Battlelore (Borg, 2006),
for the company — so I just started my own Bootleggers (Beyer et al., 2004), and Nexus Ops
company and forged ahead. Using what I had (Catino, 2005).
learned at Mayfair: primarily the mistake of 47. Voltage (Yu, 2006a) and Desert Bazaar
reprinting and not cooperating with the Ger- (Yu, 2006b).
mans (Tummelson in Glenn, 1999b). 48. Risk (Revised Edition) (Daviau, 2008).
30. Fossil, Mississippi Queen, Mississippi Queen: Designer Rob Daviau has acknowledged the in-
The Black Rose (Hodel, 1998b), Edison & Co. fluence of eurogames in the development of
(Burkhardt, 1998), Löwenherz (Teuber, 1998) more recent Hasbro titles (Vasel, 2005d).
and Ido (Weber, 1998). 49. The designer, Donald Vaccarino, had
31. Mamma Mia (Rosenberg, 1999). been involved in the development of cards for
32. Tikal (Kramer and Kiesling, 1999). Magic: The Gathering.
33. Torres (Kramer and Kiesling, 2000a).
34. Branham, an active game designer and
writer, was also responsible for The Gaming Chapter 5
Dumpster, an online rules resource.
35. Action Points — a mechanic whereby sev- 1. A number of titles included in this sample
eral actions are available to a player in their turn would likely not be considered eurogames by
but limited by the expenditure of action points. hobbyists or publishers (e.g., Die Werwölfe von
36. Carcassonne—Wirtshäuser und Kathedralen Düsterwald (Davidoff et al., 2001) and Kris
(Wrede, 2002), Carcassonne—Händler & Baumeis- Burm’s Gipf series of games: Dvonn (2001), Gipf
224 NOTES — CHAPTER 5
(1997). To exclude these from this sample would 22. While gaming writer Shannon Appelcline
be to impose a definition of the eurogame before has argued that most game mechanics can be ab-
embarking on the analysis — a somewhat spe- stracted to a form of auction (2005), I shall limit
cious approach. here the description of auctions to the more trans-
2. With apologies to Damon Knight! parent implementation of bidding mechanics.
3. Examples of this are card games such as 23. For example, Modern Art (Knizia, 1992a),
Bohnanza (Rosenberg, 1997), Bang! (Sciarra, High Society (Knizia, 1995a) and For Sale (Dorra,
2002) and Race for the Galaxy (Lehmann, 2007). 1997).
4. For example, Ra (Knizia, 1999a) and the 24. For example, Age of Steam (Wallace,
central board of Agricola (Rosenberg, 2007). 2002) and Power Grid (Friese, 2004).
5. For example, card placement in Lost 25. For example, Ra (Knizia, 1999a) and Die
Cities (Knizia, 1997b) and Blue Moon (Knizia, Fürsten von Florenz (Kramer and Ulrich, 2000).
2004c). 26. For example, Wildlife (Kramer, 2002)
6. For example, El Grande (Kramer and Ul- and Modern Art (Knizia, 1992a).
rich, 1995) and Rheinländer (Knizia, 1999b). 27. For example, Age of Steam (Wallace,
7. For example, Goldbrau (Delonge, 2004) 2002) and Löwenherz (Teuber, 1998).
and Mall World (Meyer, 2004). 28. For example, Die Macher (Schmeil,
8. For example, Carcassonne and Gheos 1986), Serenissima (Ehrhard and Vitale, 1996)
(Wiersma, 2006). and Indonesia (Doumen and Wiersinga, 2005).
9. For example, Goa (Dorn, 2004) and 29. For example, New England (Weissblum
Wasabi (Cappel, 2008). and Moon, 2003) and El Grande (Kramer and
10. For example, Franz Vohwinkel, Doris Ulrich, 1995).
Matthaus and Michael Menzel. 30. For example, Vom Kap bis Cairo
11. Perhaps the most humorous example of (Burkhardt, 2001) and New England.
this attention to detail is found in Richard Berg’s 31. For example, High Society (Knizia, 1995a)
The Campaign for North Africa (1978), in which and Geschenkt (Gimmler, 2004).
the Italian troops require additional water in 32. Designer Shannon Appelcline refers to
order that they may enjoy pasta. this variation on the English auction as “Turn-
12. Those familiar with eurogames will rec- Based Continuous Bidding” (2004).
ognize that I have chosen a title where the em- 33. For example, Medici (Knizia, 1995b) and
phasis on restricted choice is most transparent. Industria (Schacht, 2003b).
Still, as I have identified, this type of choice-dri- 34. A somewhat uncharacteristic reliance on
ven play is extremely prevalent throughout the technology for a eurogame.
genre. Tikal is used here precisely because the 35. Referred to by hobbyists as “downtime.”
mechanic is so explicitly realized. 36. Die Siedler von Catan is a good example
13. The bidding mechanic is only utilized in of this, with runaway leaders typically encoun-
the advanced “auction version” of the game. tering difficulty in performing trades that would
14. Marcel-André Casasola Merkle’s Verräter benefit them.
(Casasola Merkle, 1998) and Phillipe Keyaert’s 37. For example, Die Siedler von Catan and
Vinci (Keyaerts, 1999). Antike (Gerdts, 2005).
15. Richard Morgan’s Chess and Checkers-de- 38. For example, Roads and Boats and Caylus.
rived abstract strategy game La-Trel (Morgan, 39. For example, Union Pacific (Moon, 1999)
1994). and Stephenson’s Rocket (Knizia, 1999c).
16. See, for example, Euphrat & Tigris (Knizia, 40. For example, Imperial (Gerdts, 2006) and
1997a). Goldbräu (Delonge, 2004).
17. For example, hobbyists refer to Reiner 41. For example, Andreas Seyfarth’s Manhat-
Knizia’s Euphrat & Tigris (1997a), Samurai tan (1994) incorporates an area control element.
(1998b) and Durch die Wüste (1998a) as a tile- 42. Although simultaneous action selection
placement trilogy, though the latter does not in- is also a common mechanic in eurogames. See,
volve the placement of tiles during the game but for example, Raja: Palastbau in Indien (Kiesling
three-dimensional camel-shaped tokens. and Kramer, 2004), 6-Nimmt! (Kramer, 1994),
18. A similar limitation is seen in Richard Diamant (Moon and Faidutti, 2005) and Pi-
Breese’s Key Harvest (2007). ratenbucht (Randles and Stahl, 2002).
19. This is a common mechanic in connection 43. Wargames commonly cast players in asym-
games, such as Linie Eins (Dorra, 1995), Tsuro metrical roles from the outset of the game, while
(McMurchie, 2005) and any number of trans- role-playing is founded upon the notion of players
port-themed games. occupying separate and distinct character roles.
20. For example, Zooloretto (Schacht, 2007) 44. Interestingly, as noted earlier, this was
and Agricola (Rosenberg, 2007). also one of the few early eurogames to involve
21. For example, Alhambra (Henn, 2003). direct conflict.
Notes — Chapter 5 225
45. Kramer and Ulrich’s earlier El Grande em- creation of fantasy” (Fine, 1983, p. 230), that
ploys a very similar mechanic, although the action provides one of the keys to their attraction. Al-
cards are not tied to specific phases of the turn. though many examples could be reduced to the
46. Acknowledging the derivation, Faidutti level of abstract die rolling, this compelling el-
writes on his website: “I am indebted to that old ement would be lost in the process.
teenager, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, for 57. Although, as mentioned earlier, the qual-
taking from Verrater the character system of my ity of graphic design within eurogames is notably
game Citadels. I had most of the building sys- high, designer Mike Doyle has criticized the
tem, the scoring system, some character effects, genre for its somewhat formulaic approach to box
but I did not know how to distribute the char- design: “There has been, for many generations,
acters among the players in a tactical way while a general formula for creating box covers that ba-
allowing some bluffing with it. Then I read the sically has not changed. With the themed Euro-
rules of Verrater [sic]— even before playing the style games, for example, you will find a big, il-
game — and I directly moved the character lustrated image, usually depicting an event
choosing system from his game to mine” (n.d.). related to the theme, the big game name on top
47. In Puerto Rico players select a role on their and the publisher’s logo on bottom — usually on
turn that is then used by all players, but with the the right hand corner. Illustration styles can vary
selector receiving an additional privilege. The role and often will depict a period look.... So why do
is then unavailable for the remainder of the round. I think this formula needs rethinking? With the
48. Splotter Spellen’s Bus (Doumen and new generation of gaming at hand, the visual lan-
Wiersinga, 1999a) and Martin Wallace’s Way guage remains identical to its predecessors — it
Out West (2000) can also be considered early ex- does not communicate that something new is
amples of this mechanic. happening here” (Doyle in Bretsch, 2005).
49. Breese employed the worker placement 58. The graphic design of the game is by
mechanic in a purer form in his later game Franz Vohwinkel.
Keythedral (2002). 59. Aleknevicus is speaking here with a degree
50. Games scholar Jesper Juul explicitly fore- of levity, but the criticism is nevertheless valid.
grounds the player relationship to the over-arch- 60. Despite this observation, Knizia has
ing goal by arguing that player movement to- claimed repeatedly that theme is an important
wards the goal is reinforced by an emotional element in his designs: “The theme, mechanics
attachment to the game outcome, an assertion I and the materials in the game must work as one
shall discuss in greater detail in a later chapter. unit and if they don’t gel together I think the
51. Translated as “the Kramer track,” it was game is not complete. Sometimes people say that
first implemented by Wolfgang Kramer in Das my games are a bit abstract. I’m a more scientific
Große Unternehmen Erdgas (1982). man. My approach is that the game should have
52. In both of these cases, auctions. very simple rules and depth of play comes out
53. Or, more accurately, narrativist (Frasca, of these simple and unified rules. There may be
2003). a lot of details, but usually I have a good the-
54. See Cameron, 1995; Murray, 1997; Frasca, matic reason for these additions” (Knizia in
1999; Finn, 2000; Eskelinen, 2001; Frasca, 2001a; Batty, 2006a). See also Glenn, 2002; and Knizia,
Juul, 2001a; Juul, 2001b; Carlquist, 2002; Jenk- 2004b.
ins, 2002a; Atkins, 2003; Frasca, 2003; Eskeli- 61. While some of these changes are relatively
nen, 2004; Murray, 2005; Pearce, 2005; Brown, minimal (see, for example, Ave Caesar [Riedesser,
2007; Stern and Mateas, 2007, among many 1999], a chariot racing game rethemed as space-
others, for the details of this debate. ship racing in Q-Jet 21ZXX [Riedesser, 2005] for
55. I am aware that Eskelinen has critiqued the Japanese market), others are a complete re-
scholars for taking these words out of context in working of the theme (for example, Queen’s
the past (Eskelinen, 2005). To the extent that retheming of Dirk Henn’s game of theater man-
he clarifies his position, I agree with Eskelinen agement, Show Manager [1996], to one of ocean
that the study of theme or narrative has little to cruises in Atlantic Star [2001]).
offer in terms of understanding the nature of 62. For the purposes of this analysis, histor-
games as a “different transmedial mode and cul- ical periods have been broken down into pre-
tural genre of expression and communication historic, ancient, middle ages, early modern and
than stories.” However, as thematic elements in modern. Importantly in the case of games iden-
eurogames are marketing tools, they are more tified as being themed within the Middle Ages,
than worthy of exploration here. this does not refer to a specific location (i.e. Eu-
56. As a concrete example, role-playing games rope) that is typically associated with the term,
are, without exception, built upon the notion of merely to a time period (Approximately 400 A.D.
narrative and thematic immersion. It is the to 1500 A.D.). Thus a game such as Raja (Kies-
theme and story of these games, the “collective ling and Kramer, 2004), although taking place
226 NOTES — CHAPTER 6
in India, is categorized according to the time pe- 72. For example, Ra, Lost Valley and Euphrat
riod in which the game is set. & Tigris.
63. Although this is typically not the classic 73. For example, Die Siedler von Catan and
Tolkien-inspired fantasy that dominates Anglo- Piratenbucht (Randles and Stahl, 2002).
American designs, but rather a generic medieval 74. For example, Ticket to Ride and Elfen-
setting with fantastic elements — for example, land.
Ohne Furcht und Adel, Das Amulett (Weissblum 75. For example, Snakes and Ladders and
and Moon, 2001) or, in the case of Die Siedler Candyland.
von Catan, a fictional historical setting. 76. Beginning in approximately 2005, dice
64. German writer Morritz Eggert attributes began to appear far more commonly in eu-
the rarity of science fiction as a game theme in rogames — for example in Um Krone und Kragen
Germany to cultural memories of the way the (Lehmann, 2006), Yspahan (Pauchon, 2006),
Nazi regime “defined itself in a kind of futuristic Königsburg (Chiarvesio and Iennaco, 2007)
aesthetic” (Eggert, 2005). and Giganten der Lüfte (Seyfarth, 2007). More
65. In the case of 6 Nimmt! and Hol’s der recently, publishers have begun releasing dice-
Geier, these games use plays on German collo- based games that leverage the familiarity of al-
quialisms to locate the theme. The presence of ready popular franchises — for example, Alham-
oxen in 6 Nimmt! is a play on the common pe- bra — Das Würfelspiel (Henn, 2006), Die Siedler
jorative term hornochsen. The expression Hol’s von Catan: Das Würfelspiel (Teuber, 2007b) and
der Geier is an exclamation in German, with the Ra: The Dice Game (Knizia, 2009b).
word geier also referring to the vultures featured 77. Naturally there are many counter-exam-
on the game’s cards. In Coloretto the employ- ples in early hobby games, but the generalization
ment of chameleons is a reference to the goal of stands.
the game — collecting different colored cards. 78. Even if this is a position that some hobby
66. Two games, Kahuna (Cornett, 1998) and gamers might argue.
Alles im Eimer (Dorra, 2002), simultaneously en- 79. For example, Euphrat & Tigris, Sankt Pe-
courage the player to build and destroy the ac- tersburg and Funkenschlag (Second Edition) (Friese,
complishments of other players. Kahuna adopts a 2004).
fantasy theme, with players competing through 80. For example, Piratenbucht (Randles and
the use of magic, while the theme of Alles im Einer Stahl, 2002), Die Siedler von Catan and Ticket
casts players as children in a friendly competition to Ride.
set in a farmyard. In both cases it is buildings, 81. For example, Zooloretto and Agricola.
rather than people or animals, which are the tar- 82. Variations on this system can be seen in
gets of the destruction. Both Verräter and David a wide variety of games, including Hase und
& Goliath (Staupe, 1998) explicitly task players Ingel, Adel Verpflichtet, Ursuppe (Matthäus and
with fighting, though the relationship between the Nestel, 1997), Torres and Das Zepter von Zavan-
thematic and functional goals in the latter is ex- dor (Drögemüller, 2004), among others.
tremely tenuous, David & Goliath being a varia- 83. Stepak vs. Mashian, Israel Championship
tion on a traditional trick-taking card game. Only Semifinals, 1980. See Krabbé, 2009.
one game, notably a French design, has the the- 84. In both cases, twelve rounds.
matic goal of conquering—Condottiere (Ehrhard 85. Other examples that use this technique
and Vitale, 1995). Finally, Die Werwölfe von include El Grande, Piratenbucht (Randles and
Düsterwald (Davidoff et al., 2001), which falls Stahl, 2002), Notre Dame (Feld, 2007b), Agri-
under the umbrella of this analysis due to its ap- cola and Yspahan (Pauchon, 2006).
pearance on the Spiel des Jahres shortlist, is a com- 86. For example, Tikal, Euphrat & Tigris,
mercial version of Dimma Davidoff ’s party game Ticket to Ride and Puerto Rico.
Mafia that includes player elimination. 87. See Faidutti, 2006, for examples.
67. A number of eurogames do employ si-
multaneous actions, however; for example, Adel
Verpflichtet and Wallenstein (Henn, 2002). Chapter 6
68. Referred to in game theory as payoffs.
69. Following the initial set-up of the board, 1. In the USA and U.K., the top 4,000.
Caylus can be considered a game of perfect in- 2. The data regarding marital status was
formation, as can Packeis am Pol ( Jakeliunas and drawn from an informal poll conducted by user
Cornett, 2003) and Age of Steam (Wallace, 2002). LankyEngineer in 2008. This data is based on
70. For example, Attika (Casasola Merkle, 2256 respondents as of January 2010 (LankyEngi-
2003), Elfenland and Notre Dame (Feld, 2007b). neer, 2008b).
71. For example, Goa, Amon Ra (Knizia, 2003) 3. Based on 2957 responses as of February
and Sankt Petersburg (Brunnhofer and Tummel- 20, 2009.
hofer, 2004). 4. For example, although data on gaming in
Notes — Chapter 6 227
the general population is closely guarded by the cent had achieved more than undergraduate ed-
industry, a 2000 report by Wizards of the Coast ucation.
indicates that approximately 3 percent of the 11. Although Bordenet’s survey indicates that
population play role-playing games at least once only 11 percent of participants have completed
a month, compared with 16 percent in this sur- an undergraduate degree, the age group surveyed
vey (Dancey, 2000). is significantly lower. When taking into account
5. National gaming conventions such as those respondents who have completed “some
Origins and Gencon offer players the possibility college,” the figure rises to 51 percent. Given the
of participating in tournament play and/or set age range identified in his survey (38 percent are
aside areas for open gaming, as do smaller local under 25), it is safe to assume that a sizeable
conventions. Usually attended by industry pro- proportion of these respondents were engaged
fessionals and the general public, the larger con- in study at the time of the survey.
ventions serve as a way for companies to reach 12. The reference here to “slans” is a notable
their target audience, demonstrate upcoming re- one. Within Science Fiction fandom, the notion
leases and organize tournaments to bolster of slans is used to identify a particular type of
awareness of particular games. Typically, larger fan, or at least the attitude of a specific subset,
conventions cover all aspects of the broader gam- who have subverted the perceived marginaliza-
ing culture, while smaller local conventions are tion of their interests to the point where they see
generally genre specific. Of the two U.S. na- themselves as belonging to a community that
tional conventions, Origins is anecdotally con- “possess[es] a truth which is denied to outsiders”
sidered a more gamer-focused event due to the ( James, 1994, p. 135). The idea that gamers are
greater opportunities for casual/open gaming, also in possession of a truth that might benefit
while Gencon is perceived as a larger, more in- the broader culture is a topic I explore later in
dustry-focused event at which many companies this chapter.
debut new titles. Both feature organized tour- 13. It is also likely that the communities over-
nament play. Local conventions are numerous lap. Certainly my local gaming group, the West
in the U.S., with most organized by regional Australian Boardgaming Association, shows sig-
gaming clubs. nificant overlap with West Australian science fic-
Tournaments on a large scale occur at the tion fandom.
World Boardgaming Championships in Lan- 14. Again, the comparison with fans, who
caster, Pennsylvania, an event specifically dedi- Bruner and Thorne describe as “focus[ing] their
cated to board games (“Boardgame Players As- time energy and resources intently on a specific
sociation,” 2009). Organized by the non-profit area of interest,” is unavoidable (2006, p. 53).
Boardgame Players Association, the WBC re- 15. As of August 2011, only one of the top 100
placed Avalon Hill’s dedicated convention in games on boardgamegeek is produced by a main-
1999 and continues to draw audiences of around stream manufacturer — this being Hasbro’s
1300 players each year. As with the broader reprint of Sid Sackson’s Acquire. There have been
board gaming hobby, the shift towards Euro- several exceptions to this general dismissal of
pean-style games has been considerable since the mainstream games. Interestingly, the two most
inception of the convention. Further reflecting notable have come from the area of dexterity
this shift, since 2001 the Boardgame Players As- games. Loopin Louie (Wiselely, 1992) is a chil-
sociation, along with the Games Club of Mary- dren’s dexterity game manufactured by Milton
land, has been organizing Euroquest, a conven- Bradley that was awarded the Kinderspiele des
tion specifically dedicated to European-style Jahres in 1994. The game experienced a boost in
games that includes tournament events linked popularity among gamers after being played
to the WBC. heavily at Alan Moon’s Gathering of Friends
6. Fine cites two 1978 surveys, one from the events in the late 1990s. In 2008 the mass-mar-
Judges Guild Journal which found that 2.3 per- ket Sorry Sliders! (Van Ness, 2008) received sim-
cent of players of RPGs were female, and an- ilar attention as a substitute for the well-regarded
other in Metagaming’s The Space Gamer in but expensive public domain game Crokinole.
which only 0.4 percent of respondents were fe- 16. See, in particular, Bordieu, 1979.
male. 17. Based on 137 responses as of January 10,
7. Eighty-three percent of respondents were 2010.
under 35, and only 40 percent had been mar- 18. The use of this way of measuring the value
ried. of games has been taken up by other members
8. The survey covers players of role-playing of the hobby in the form of “five and dime lists.”
games, wargames and collectible card games. In the transition, however, the original purpose
9. In 2004, Deppey reports that the average has been largely forgotten, and such lists are now
age of a comic book reader is 34 years. seen as an indicator of the popularity of specific
10. Fine notes that, of gamers over 21, 51 per- games over time. See Jackson, 2006.
228 NOTES — CHAPTER 7
19. For examples, see threads Estimating CCP Fruit Trader (Wu, 2005), and Carcassonne: Treas-
(Cost Per Play) of my collection (Kobra1, 2005), ure Hunt (Wu, 2008).
How many plays should we expect out of a game? 29. The original version of the game posi-
( Jome, 2008) and Boardgames: Higher Entertain- tions the players as the heads of feuding Scottish
ment Value Than You Thought! (flabber23, 2007). clans.
20. Based on 2834 respondents as of January 30. Exemplar of this level of commitment
9, 2009. is Karim Chakroun’s redesign of Richard
21. Based on 421 responses as of January 10, Hamblen’s fantasy game Magic Realm (1978), a
2010. The phenomenon of the “unplayed game” project that required over 300 hours of work
has led Australian user John Farrell to establish (Chakroun, 2009).
a supplementary site where player statistics from 31. Designers Andrea Angiolino, Bruno
BGG are analyzed to determine, among other Faidutti, Friedemann Friese, Richard Breese,
things, a “Friendless metric” which indicates how William Attia, Jeroen Doumen, Martin Wallace,
much of a collection is played with any regular- Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, Kevin Wilson,
ity (2009). Bruno Cathala and Lewis Pulsipher, among
22. For example, Alea produces three series many others, are contributors to the site.
of numbered games: big, medium and small box, 32. For example, in 2009 designer Rüdiger
most of which have been reprinted in English by Dorn actively enrolled site members in discussing
Rio Grande Games. However, since English lan- changes prior to the re-release of his game Goa
guage versions of Chinatown and Adel Verpflichtet (Dorn, 2009). Similarly, one of the designers of
were not produced, original German versions of Avalon Hill’s Betrayal at House on the Hill (Mc-
these titles are sought after by collectors. The re- Quillan et al., 2004), Bruce Glassco, solicited
cent “Bookshelf Series” of titles released by input and ideas from hobbyists for inclusion in
Gryphon Games also employs numbering. the second edition of the game (Glassco, 2009).
23. Although this is probably due in most 33. For example, the German-to-English
cases to economic convenience, publishers ar- translation of Uwe Rosenberg’s Agricola was ini-
guably leverage this similarity in creating “lines,” tially undertaken by Australian boardgamegeek
such as the Kosmos 2-Player line. Clearly, the member Melissa Rogerson due to hobbyist in-
use of similar presentation establishes coherency terest in the German version. The English ver-
in a company’s product range, with the percep- sion of the game produced by Z-Man utilized
tion of groups as a “set” a fortunate side-effect. Rogerson’s translation. Rogerson subsequently
24. Reflecting the gendered nature of the worked on the translation of Rosenberg’s next
hobby, such spaces have been referred to as “man- game, Le Havre (Rosenberg, 2008).
caves.” 34. Pope, 2006.
25. “Pr0n” being Internet slang for pornog- 35. Designed by Yehuda Berlinger, another
raphy, a term originally used on usenet groups example of a hobbyist turned designer (Berlinger,
as a way to bypass language filters. 2007).
26. Fiske is here writing before the advent of 36. Pope and Cheatham, 2008.
the World Wide Web. While his comments re- 37. A geeklist is a function of the site that al-
main true in principle, the potential for fan-cre- lows users to list a series of games with com-
ated texts to reach an audience outside of the mentary after each. Although initially conceived
community is greatly increased. as a way to group games with something in com-
27. As an example, the English version of the mon, the feature has subsequently been utilized
fantasy-themed adventure game Die Rückkehr by users in a myriad of creative ways. Geeklists
der Helden (Stepponat, 2003) suffers from a have become a central feature of the site, oper-
ruleset that is written as an ongoing discussion ating as a facility for community building and
between the player characters in the game. De- the development of cultural capital.
spite being extremely humorous, it is generally 38. In another intertextual reference, the cur-
considered a failure in terms of rule clarity. User rency employed in the game is Florins, a partic-
Christopher Young has rewritten the entire rule- ularly ubiquitous currency in eurogames.
set in a way that makes the game far more ac- 39. “These Games of Ours”— a now rarely
cessible (Young, 2007). In an example of the used acronym dating from an early discussion
value of this feedback loop, designer Lutz Step- on rec.games.board of an alternate name for Ger-
ponat has since suggested that discussions on the man-style games.
website have informed his decision to rewrite
the rules in an upcoming edition (Stepponat,
2008). Chapter 7
28. See, for example Carcassonne: The Well and
the Donkey (Exit191, 2006b), Carcassonne: Dragon 1. For example, evolutionist and political
Riders and Slayers (Exit191, 2006a), Carcassonne: theorist Herbert Spencer saw play as a method
Notes — Chapter 7 229
of using up excess energy and directing that en- ulate in play activities. As an example, a child
ergy towards activities that were of particular in- involved in a running race resists the urge to
terest to the individual (Spencer, 1855). Another begin before the agreed moment in order to ex-
proponent of this idea, German poet Friedrich perience the pleasure of social play. In this way,
Schiller, saw the function of play as lying in the the rules of play become the strongest impulse;
balance drawn between the rational and spiritual “to carry out the rule is a source of pleasure”
instincts, claiming that “the double action of the (Vygotsky, 1976, p. 549).
two ... instincts, will content the mind at once 5. Reflecting the complexity of this ques-
morally and physically” (1954). In contrast, the tion, researchers have also identified control
“relaxation” or “recreation” theory proposed by (Barnett et al., 1997; Grodal, 2000; Vorderer,
Moritz Lazarus and George Patrick suggests that 2000; Newman, 2002), competition (Vorderer
the function of play is primarily a restorative one et al., 2003), escapism (Barnett et al., 1997), so-
(Lazarus, 1883; Patrick, 1916). ciality ( Jansz and Martens, 2005), self-efficacy
2. For example, Karl Groos’ instrumentalist (Klimmt and Hartmann, 2006), identification
theory proposes that play constitutes a child’s with a player character (Hefner et al., 2007) and
way of preparing for adult life (1898; 1901). In- suspense (Klimmt et al., 2009) as other potential
deed, a number of early psychological theorists sources of pleasure for players in different forms
view child’s play as a recapitulation of cultural of games.
development that allows the child to “play out” 6. Although the issue of time commitment
the steps in the evolution of mores (Wundt, that Juul describes is not so constraining as it is
1902; Hall, 1906). More recently, social psychol- in video games — which can take days of a
ogist Kurt Lewin interprets play as being reflec- player’s life to complete — I have already iden-
tive of the unstructured state of the infant mind, tified how game length effects general gaming
flitting between the real and unreal (Sutton- preferences among hobbyists.
Smith and Herron, 1971). Similarly, Frederick 7. The categories originally included in the
Buytendijik suggests that due to this incoherent survey were “Do Not Enjoy,” “Rarely Enjoy,”
cognitive and emotional state, play is the only “Usually Enjoy” and “Always Enjoy.”
activity of which a child is capable (Helms and 8. Variable phase order is a term that refers
Turner, 1981). Psychoanalytic theory tends to to games where each turn may have a different
focus on the fantasy element of play in the order. Although not, strictly speaking, a “me-
growth of the human psyche. Anna and Sig- chanic,” it typically stems from the use of me-
mund Freud propose that play allows the child chanics, such as role selection and worker place-
to express negative emotions over problems ment.
which she is unable to exert control in real life 9. Hand management is a commonly used
(Freud, 1959; Freud, 1968). mechanic in eurogames; however, it is also pres-
3. Most famously, Jean Piaget’s theory of cog- ent in many American hobby games and, of
nitive development identifies a series of devel- course, collectible card games.
opmental stages through which children pass se- 10. Ninety-six percent of respondents indi-
quentially, progressing through play which cate that replayability is either very important
emphasizes sensorimotor, preoperational, con- (67 percent) or quite important (29 percent).
crete operational and formal operational thought 11. Exceptions exist in the case of “speed-
processes. In each of these stages the child is said runs” (Lowood, 2005) and games that offer mul-
to develop new knowledge through a state of tiple endings, but the generalization holds.
cognitive disequilibrium that must be brought 12. Although some board games do have ele-
into balance through accommodation (attempt- ments of progression in them (e.g., Tales of the
ing to imitate and physically interact with the Arabian Nights [Goldberg, 1985]), most are
environment) and assimilation (attempting to largely emergent. Juul suggests that multiplayer
integrate external precepts or actions) (Gruber board games are the purest examples of this
and Voneche, 1977). game form (2005, p. 71).
4. For example, Lev Vygotsky places a strong 13. Although some of the ideas discussed in
emphasis on the interpersonal nature of learning this section were originally presented in my ar-
and the way in which understandings are devel- ticle “Playing with an Other: Ethics in the Magic
oped through the use of symbolic tools such as Circle” (2007), these thoughts were subse-
language (Crawford, 1996). For Vygotsky, forms quently crystallized through reading designer
of play are not primarily determined by any in- Lewis Pulsipher’s blog post “The system and the
nate factor but are reflective of the individuals, psychological in games” (2009b).
social institutions and culture in whose proxim- 14. Eighty-six percent of respondents cite di-
ity the child develops (Vygotsky, 1962; Goldfarb, rect interaction as either quite important (48
2001). Of particular interest are Vygotsky’s ob- percent) or very important (37 percent) in their
servations on the way in which children self reg- enjoyment. Eighty percent consider indirect in-
230 NOTES — CHAPTERS 8, 9, 10
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257
258 INDEX
Taluva 90 Verräter 96
Task Force Games 38 Das Verrückte Labyrinth 69
Teuber, Klaus 58, 64, 66, 69, 71–72, 74, 77, Villa Paletti 77
90, 115 Vino 54
theme 104–107, 163–164; analysis 107– Vygotsky, Lev 209
110
Thornquist, Rick 60 Waddingtons 1, 35
Thoughtwave 36 Walker, Brian 57, 65–67
3M games 33–35, 37, 45, 58 War in Europe 23
Thurn und Taxis 77 War in the East 23
Ticket to Ride 77, 102, 188 War in the West 23
Tidwell, Ken 70–72 Wardrup-Fruin, Noah 9
Tikal 75, 86–87, 95, 178 Wargames 5, 9, 15, 21–25, 32, 35, 38, 41, 56–
tile placement (game mechanic) 33, 36, 57, 83, 112–113, 118, 136, 156, 212
70, 76, 85–86, 88–90, 149, 158–159, Warhammer 25
164 Warrior Knights 42
Timberland 71 Watts, David 42, 64
Titan 38, 138 Weninger, Celia 200
Toncar, Walter 67 Werneck, Tom 50, 52, 59
Torres 75, 113 West End Games 44
Totopoly 1 Wettering, Ronald 70
trading (game mechanic) 40, 72, 88–89, 91– White Wind 69, 71, 74
92, 98, 105, 112, 130, 158–160, 161; see also White Wolf 27
negotiation (game mechanic) Whitehill, Bruce 3, 8
Tresham, Francis 36, 40–41, 43, 45, 67 Wildlife Adventure 70
A Trip Around the World 48 Williams, J. Patrick 134
Trivial Pursuit 18 Wits and Wagers 76
Tsao, Vincent 37 Wittig, Reinhold 53
Tummelson, Jay 73, 75 Wiz War 44, 88
TV Wars 88 Wizards of the Coast 28–29, 124
Twixt 17, 33 Wolfe, Mark J.P. 21
Tycoon 74 worker placement (game mechanic) 88, 92,
Tyranno Ex 70 95–96, 158–159
Überplay 77 Yu-Gi-Oh! 30
Uhl, Mick 36
Ulrich, Richard 73, 76, 94 Z-Man Games 44, 77, 138–139
Um Reifenbreite 69 Zagal, Jose 167–168
Union Pacific 114 Zamborsky, Steve 3, 139
Up Front 88 Zappa, Leo 118
Zick Zacke Hühnerkacke 66
Valley Games 38, 65, 138 Zimmerman, Eric 8, 82, 84, 113, 165, 189
Valley of the Four Winds 41 Zombies in My Pocket 139
Vampire: The Masquerade 27 Zooloretto 77
Vasey, Charles 67, 133 Zug um Zug see Ticket to Ride
Verdict 37